


A Torture for Two

by ImprobableDreams900



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bad Things Happen To Carlos, Bad Things Happen To Cecil, Brainwashing, Carlos is a Good Boyfriend, Cecil is Mostly Human, Depression, Diego is a mad scientist, Electrocution, Fluff, Grief, Implied Sexual Abuse, Kidnapping, M/M, Physical Torture, Re-Education, Reunion, Suicidal Thoughts, Torture, emotional torture, this is the angstiest thing I've ever written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-01
Updated: 2015-06-03
Packaged: 2018-04-02 08:46:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 40,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4053859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImprobableDreams900/pseuds/ImprobableDreams900
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos returns home from the desert otherworld to find Cecil's been kidnapped...by Diego.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Coming Home

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to be pretty trigger-heavy, so be careful if that's a problem for you. Certain chapters will be worse than others, and I'll warn you as best I can (the end of this chapter has a bit of torture).
> 
> I have finished writing this fic, and a new chapter will go up every day, and it should all be up in a week or so.

Carlos had never been happier to see a door in his entire life.

Its tawny frame blended in perfectly with the sandy slopes surrounding it, but once Carlos had picked it out with his eyes from the otherworldly desert landscape, it was impossible to overlook.

Six long weeks he’d spent looking for a door like this one, in between collecting samples for later analysis and trying not to get Cecil’s hopes up during their too-short phone calls, and now it hardly seemed possible that his prayers had been answered.

Carlos took a couple shaky steps forward, reaching out to run his hand down the rough oak frame. He could practically feel the splinters digging into the pads of his fingers, but he only let out a small, giddy laugh. It was real!

His heart still beating a mile a minute, he looked down from the door to the whizzing device in his hand that had led him to it, and then over his shoulder to the army of giant masked warriors who had followed him to it.

“Thank you,” he said, feeling a relieved grin breaking across his face. “Thank you all so much, for everything.”

Doug, who was standing in his usual place at the forefront, dipped his head in acknowledgement.

“I don’t know if—” Carlos began, feeling he should say more, but Doug shook his head and Alicia motioned him towards the door.

“Yes. Sorry. Well, thanks again. I won’t forget you.”

Doug grunted something encouraging, and all the masked warriors pounded their spears on their shields in a show of respect. Carlos felt himself blush lightly, and thanked them one last time before turning back to the door.

He pulled his satchel filled with samples higher on his shoulder as he dropped his other hand to the round brass handle and turned it.

A sparkling blackness was all that was visible through the open door, but Carlos felt certain his home lay somewhere just beyond that.

He took a deep breath, steeled himself, and stepped forward.

 

~~~~****~~~~

 

It was dark.

Carlos stood blinking in the inky blackness, feeling a light breeze ruffle through his hair and along the edge of his lab coat.

The old oak door creaked shut behind him and when he reached back for it automatically, his hand met only air.

Carlos stayed where he was, not daring to move until his eyes had adjusted at least partially from the blinding brightness of the desert otherworld. After a few long, stifling minutes, he was able to pick out the dark shapes of buildings in front of him, on the other side of a road. A streetlight hummed off to his left, shedding only the faintest of light over the cracked pavement. It seemed very late; the stars were cold and clear and there was no sign of light on any horizon.

As his eyes adjusted more, he saw that he was standing on a sidewalk, and the buildings across from him were houses, built in the big Victorian style favored by the Night Vale residential areas.

Carlos turned hesitantly in a circle. But _was_ this Night Vale?

Behind him was only a long row of evergreens, the close-needled ones that grew more narrowly than their Christmas tree cousins.

Looking for some kind of unique landmark to reassure himself that he was really home, Carlos started off down the sidewalk.

Before long he reached a crossroads, and the line of trees on his left terminated abruptly.

Carlos took a cautious left, keeping on the sidewalk. He looked down the new road, and saw what the row of evergreens had obscured—a long metal fence, the vertical bars highlighted white and blue in the flickering streetlights. Carlos broke into a light jog, running a hand along the cold metal bars as he made for the closest sign tacked onto them. Could it be…?

ABSOLUTELY NO DOGS IN THE DOG PARK read the large metal sign. BY ORDER OF THE SHERIFF’S SECRET POLICE >:-( GRRR was lettered underneath in a bold typeface. And at the very bottom, in font Carlos had to stick his face very close to read in the dim light: WE MEAN IT.

Carlos felt his breathing speed up to match his racing heart—he was home! Well and proper and truly _home_ , at long, long last. Carlos gripped the forbidden fence rails, relishing the solidity of the cold metal, and resisted the urge to kiss the sign.

He took a huge breath, feeling himself grinning at nothing. He spun, getting his bearings properly as he determined exactly where he was.

He directed his feet towards the Cactus Bloom Housing Development where he and Cecil lived, breaking into a light sprint after a few yards.

Carlos was not embarrassed to say he was considerably out of shape, and he soon had to drop back into a brisk walk as he passed under the eternally flickering streetlights. He skirted the businesses in the center of town, and was relieved to see that they seemed to have changed little in his absence; he knew time passed strangely in Night Vale and the desert otherworld, and had his fingers crossed that the old oak door had linked the two temporal zones reasonably well.

It seemed eons before he finally found himself outside his and Cecil’s house. Oh, how he loved saying that. _His and Cecil’s._

He almost skipped up the short cement stairs, rapping musically on the door once he reached the top, a silly grin on his face. He waited, nervously bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. After a moment he stopped and nervously tried to flatten his hair down into something more presentable.

When there were no signs of life in the house, he took a couple of steps back to a) check that this was indeed the right house, and b) look for any lights on upstairs.

He decided Cecil must have just not heard him, and pounded more loudly on the door.

Still no response.

Trying to convince himself that that didn’t necessarily mean anything bad had happened, Carlos dug around in his pockets and satchel and finally procured his keys from a side pocket in his bag, stuffed underneath a Ziploc bag filled with otherworldly-desert sand. He slid the appropriate key into the lock and let himself in.

He flipped on the light and glanced around, dropping his satchel in a pile by the door as he did so.

Much to his relief, it _was_ the right house, and still theirs; there was the bright green couch from Cecil’s apartment, here was the hat stand Carlos had found at one of the many Night Vale estate sales and insisted on buying.

The desire to sneak upstairs and surprise Cecil was very strong, but Carlos took a moment to ghost around the living room first. His fingers trailed over the photographs on an end table, tapped out an absentminded rhythm on the old LP player in the corner, and leafed through the stack of lab papers piled on a chair. He must have left them there before he got trapped; the date on the top page was the day before he entered the house that didn’t exist.

Aiming to determine more accurately how much time had passed since his departure, so he would be better prepared for whatever reaction Cecil gave him, he floated into the kitchen and checked the calendar by the fridge. It was the same month and year Carlos thought it ought to be, and he let out a deep breath. He’d been gone for more than three weeks and less than seven, then. He could work with that.

Out of curiosity (and the fact that he was actually quite hungry) he pulled the fridge open and poked around. He frowned. Most of the food was spoiled or moldy. Maybe Cecil had been eating out a lot lately? Or maybe it was the bimonthly Spoil-All-The-Food-In-Your-Refrigerator Day. Who knew?

Carlos decided his churning stomach could wait until he had someone to eat with, and excitedly backed out towards the stairs.

He crept up them as quietly as he could, the silly smile on his face again as he imagined Cecil’s reaction upon seeing him.

He tiptoed down the hallway to the bedroom at the end. To his surprise, the door was open, which was unusual. He pushed it all the way open and paused, peering through the half-light, eyes still adjusting from the lights downstairs.

He took a couple hesitant steps forward.

“Cecil?” he said softly, inching towards the bed in the darkness.

His leg bumped against the frame and his fingers quested along the blankets, searching for his lover. His hands encountered a bunched up pile of blankets, but no Cecil.

Carlos frowned and finally walked back to the door and turned the lights on.

The bed was half-made, and rather badly, and had been further disturbed by Carlos. In some ways, that was reassuring; he knew Cecil was sloppy about making the bed, and if it had been carefully tucked into perfect smoothness, he would have been concerned.

But, nonetheless, Cecil was not there.

Carlos checked the bathroom, and walked through every other room in the house, but there was no sign of Cecil or any indication as to where he might be. His shoes were gone, but the car was still in the garage. Carlos knew Cecil walked to work when it was nice out, as it had been recently, but he would have hardly walked anywhere in the dark, would he?

 _Maybe he’s just out for a midnight stroll_ , Carlos reassured himself. _Sleepwalking. Or couldn’t sleep. It happens._

A darker thought poked at Carlos’ head. Carlos tried to push it away, but it poked harder. _Maybe he’s not in your bed_ , the tiny voice said maliciously, _because he’s in somebody else’s._

Carlos shoved the voice back into the furthest recess of his mind with a shudder. Cecil was just out for a walk; that was all. He’d be back. He’d be fine.

 _Then why is all the food spoiled?_ a different voice asked. _And why is there a very fine layer of dust over everything, even the couch?_

That voice Carlos couldn’t entirely discount on principle, and he felt a dark panic slowly creeping over him.

 _You haven’t talked to him in a while,_ the voice pointed out. _You know how Night Vale is—death by Glow Cloud, death by dog park, death by oranges, death by mirror—_

Carlos took a couple long, deep breaths to clear his head, but he was already striding quickly towards the door, trying not to break into a panicked run. He turned all the lights off and locked up behind him, though it hardly seemed likely that anyone would try to break in.

Standing forlornly on the cement steps, he pulled his lab coat tighter around him, suddenly feeling the biting cold of the night. He took a moment to look up and down the street, unsure of where to go next. The radio station seemed a likely bet, but he doubted anyone besides station management would be there at this hour, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to talk to them right now.

Carlos bounded down the short cement steps and walked briskly across the lawn to the road. He decided that, after himself, Dana was Cecil’s best friend, and the mayor to boot. She would know something.

He turned in the direction of her house and felt himself break into a run. He didn’t slow down this time.

 

~~~~****~~~~

 

Carlos wasted no time in alternatively banging on Dana’s door and smashing the doorbell button.

To his relief, a light came on almost immediately, and he heard a yelled, “Hold on a minute!” from inside.

The door opened a heartbeat later to reveal a sleepy-eyed and wild-haired Dana pulling a robe around her shoulders.

The moment she saw it was Carlos, her eyes widened and she took a short step back, looking like he’d slapped her.

“Where’s Cecil?” Carlos demanded without preamble.

“Oh gods. Oh, Carlos.” She put a hand over her mouth and reached out towards him with the other. Her fingers gently prodded his arm through his lab coat as though assuring herself he was real. Her voice cracked. “Oh, Carlos, I’m so sorry.”

Carlos felt his skin turn to ice. “Cecil—he—he—he’s not—” He was having trouble getting the words out. He felt like his entire world had narrowed to contain only the answer of this single question.

“Oh, no! He’s not dead. At least—we don’t think so. Here, come in.” Dana quickly backed up, gesturing him inside.

“Don’t _think_ so?” Carlos forced his leaden limbs into motion as Dana closed the door behind him with a soft click.

She indicated he take a seat on one of the tastefully decorated chairs in the foyer and hurried off into the kitchen. She returned a moment later with a mug full of what he first took as tea but turned out to be coffee.

“Oh, gods, Carlos, I…” She trailed off again, hovering near his elbow, fingers nervously clutching a second mug. Eventually she took the seat opposite him.

Carlos could feel the weight on his shoulders increase as she sat down, face torn between pity and horror. If his limbs had been lead before, now they were black holes with infinite mass, pulling at his breath and heart and nerves and stringing them out into rows of singular atoms, swirling around the blinding event horizon and sliding down the gravity well, where they would be crushed to absolute oblivion—

“He went missing two weeks ago,” Dana said suddenly, interrupting Carlos’ runaway train of thought. “An intern watched him leave the radio station after the show, and a couple witnesses passed him on his way home, but the secret police officer at his house never saw him.”

The black hole was sucking harder now, and it was getting increasingly difficult to breathe.

“They found his phone on the sidewalk by the post office; it looked like it had been thrown on the ground and stepped on. We don’t know who took him yet; there were some rumors of StrexCorp involvement, but they were thoroughly dissolved after the company picnic, and Kevin’s still missing as well. And we’ve got close tabs on that Lauren woman too, so—Carlos?”

The world was getting a bit hazy and gray around the edges, and Carlos felt the hot mug in his hand begin to slip from his grip as Dana surged forward.

He felt the mug tugged from his hand, and then the grayness was all over his vision and there was a gentle pressure on his back.

A moment later he blinked, and found he was lying flat on his back on the tasteful green and gray carpet of the foyer, and Dana was holding his feet up.

He tried to retract his feet and sit up—he was a grown man, after all—but the static-like haze returned and he grudgingly dropped his head back onto the carpet with a brief, frustrated groan. Had he fainted? How embarrassing.

“Just lie still for a moment,” Dana directed, lowering his feet back to the ground. “You’re super pale. When was the last time you ate anything?”

Carlos shrugged noncommittally from the floor. “Didn’t get hungry much in that desert otherworld.”

Dana muttered something about desert otherworlds and idiot scientists and moved out of his field of vision. A moment later he heard her clanking around in the kitchen.

Carlos stared blankly up at the ceiling, and fear suddenly renewed its clenched stranglehold on his chest.

He took as deep of breaths as he could manage, but his mind was one long line of _Cecil Cecil oh God Cecil’s gone he’s gone he’d dead Cecil’s dead oh no oh God no Cecil Cecil Cecil Cecil I’m never going to see him again, never going to touch him—_

After an indefinite period of time, Dana was standing over him again, this time reaching down to help pull him into a sitting position. She left him on the floor, legs half pulled to his chest, and handed him a sandwich on a plate.

The bread was of course substituted for a strange sort of dry waffle, and even though it looked and smelled delicious, he couldn’t imagine eating anything with this acid burning through his insides.

“Come on, Carlos, you’ve got to eat something.” Dana had seated herself back in her chair and was watching him carefully as he stared blankly at the plate in his hands. “I don’t know what happened to Cecil, but I sure as hell intend to find out. He’s my friend too, you know. We couldn’t start looking until after the mandatory four-day window, in case he had been taken in for questioning by the vague-yet-menacing government agency, but as soon as that was over, I asked the City Council to look into it, and they’re still investigating.”

Carlos nodded shakily, mentally grasping at her words, trying to hold on long enough for them to pull him out of the whirlpool of his own frantic thoughts.

“But, you know what—I haven’t asked the angels yet. I mean, angels aren’t real, but if they were, they might know something, especially if he’s ended up in some other dimension or something.”

“That’s a good…good idea,” Carlos said faintly, pushing the untouched plate onto the coffee table and starting to stand up. He didn’t make it very far and began swaying again almost immediately. Again he felt Dana’s hands hard on his shoulders, this time forcing him back down onto the couch.

“Oh no, you don’t,” she said sternly from above him, hands on her hips. “We’re not going anywhere until I see you eat that sandwich.”

 

~~~~****~~~~

 

TWO WEEKS AGO

 

It was a room.

_Good job, Cecil. Start small. Be a scientist about this._

It was a small room. Maybe twenty feet across.

_Keep it slow. One step at a time. Don’t get too—ow!_

…

It was a small room. There was a door. Door-sized. Gray. Metal.

He was in a chair. Bound. Rope and leather and clinking metal.

Pain. Localized. Stomach. Shoulders. Head.

Cecil groaned, rolling his head back as he cracked his eyes open further. There was something sticky and warm down the right side of his face, and he wanted to rub it off, but his hands were tied to the arms of the chair.

He was alone for now, so he sat back, trying to remember what had happened.

He’d done the show, he remembered that much; a large green reverse-sinkhole had appeared out by the Ralph’s, and had spit out several hundred pounds of dirt and rock in the parking lot before they’d figured out how to plug it.

Then…he’d locked up, pet Khoshekh a bit…walked home…

Wait.

“Carlos!”

The word escaped from his lips unbidden. He had seen Carlos. But how—?

The door to his prison swung open, and Carlos strolled in. Cecil blinked in shock.

“Ding, ding, ding!” said Carlos with a broad smile, gesturing theatrically. “I rescued you, remember, Cecil? Rescued you from those awful people in Night Vale.”

Cecil stared at him. He certainly _looked_ like Carlos, but…not _quite_. Same perfect face and teeth and voice, but the dignified touch of gray at the temples was gone, leaving a man with pure black hair. He was wearing a lab coat over a suit, but his coat was black, unlike Carlos’ usual white.

Cecil remembered now; he’d been walking home when all of a sudden a van had pulled up next to him. It was not unusual; vans of every description often pulled up next to people, but then _Carlos_ had jumped out of the driver’s seat. Cecil remembered a great swelling of emotion, quickly followed by surprise and then a sharp pain in his head. It was all fuzzy after that.

“Who are you?” Cecil asked, blinking as something warm dripped into his right eye.

“Carlos!” said the man who was most definitely not Carlos.

“You’re _not_ Carlos,” Cecil told him with absolute certainty.

“You’re right,” the man allowed, and then suddenly stopped pacing and advanced on the chair. His eyes grew wide, and it was like Carlos’ did when he was about to talk about science, but instead, this man’s mouth gaped into a wide, terrible smile that warped his beautiful features. “I’m not Carlos. But I am now.”

Cecil flinched away automatically from the awful caricature of his lover. “What do you mean, ‘am now’?”

“I _am_ Carlos,” Most-Definitely-Not-Perfect-Carlos said with that terrible smile and a blasé wave of his hand, which suddenly had a knife in it.

Before Cecil knew what was happening, the man was leaning over him, that terrible smile still etched permanently into his features. Cecil pulled back as far as he could in the chair, which was admittedly not much, feeling Not-Carlos’ breath warm on his face. Gods, he even _smelled_ like Carlos.

“My true name is not important, but let it suffice to know that you destroyed StrexCorp and took Kevin away from me, and I will destroy you for that.”

“It’s not—not me, particularly—” Cecil said weakly. Damn, that scent was intoxicating.

“The hell it isn’t!” Not-Carlos growled. “I read the reports. A certain community radio host stirred up a whole lot of trouble and practically led the revolution. And guess what—as it turns out, he’s the spitting image of my lovely Kevin. But not quite. Worse. Well, let me tell you, _Cecil Palmer_ —” his voice was practically a hiss now, angry and rough, and never again did Cecil want to hear his voice spoken that way in Carlos’ perfect voice— “You took Kevin away from me, and that hurt. That hurt a lot. And you know what they say: an eye for an eye.”

Cecil wasn’t quite sure what sort of argument would be effective against that, but decided he might as well take a stab at it. “Well, you see, Kevin is stuck in the desert otherworld, yes? And Carlos is too, so doesn’t that—” He broke off with a sharp curse as Carlos’ double’s blade bit into his shoulder, drawing a long slice into his skin.

“Carlos is not stuck in a desert otherworld,” Not-Carlos said patiently. “I am Carlos.”

“No, you’re _not_ ,” Cecil said forcefully.

This time the knife bit deeper into his shoulder, just an inch down from the last mark and perfectly parallel. Cecil bit back a scream, gritting his teeth instead. This man knew his way around a knife; that was for sure.

“I am Carlos.”

“No, you’re some sick Desert Bluffs double—”

This time Cecil couldn’t stop the scream from tearing itself from his throat.


	2. The Search for Cecil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carlos continues his search for Cecil...but is it too late?
> 
> This is a fairly short chapter, just because the next one is so long and I couldn't find a place to break it up. So extra-long chapter tomorrow!

Carlos admitted to himself that he did feel a little better after the sandwich and some water, though that might have been at least partially due to the shock wearing off a little.

Dana said they’d go see the angels first thing in the morning, and it was like three o’clock and she really needed to get some sleep. Carlos reluctantly acquiesced, though for him it felt like it was still early afternoon. So Dana went up to get some shut-eye and Carlos remained on her couch, feeling like he should go home but unsure where that was. The thought of being surrounded by all of his and Cecil’s familiar things while his boyfriend was who-knows-where having who-knows-what done to him turned his stomach. So instead he lay down on Dana’s couch and tried to rationally sort through all the different possibilities. He ran the numbers, and was horrified to discover that even if he ran conservative figures, the odds that Cecil was alive right now were worse than thirty percent. He didn’t get much sleep after that.

 

When Dana finally made her way downstairs around seven in the morning, she found Carlos passed out on her couch. He looked considerably worse for wear: the sand and dust in his hair and caked on his lab coat—and also now scattered all over her carpet—made him look bedraggled and exhausted, and there were dark rings around his eyes.

She busied herself making a fresh cup of coffee and calling the City Hall for any news from the Council, keeping quiet so as not to disturb the scientist.

“We believe Cecil may have been abducted by a black van,” said the voice of the Council leader from her phone.

Dana waited. “Well?” she demanded. “How do you figure? Whose was it?”

There was an uncomfortable silence. “Witnesses say there was an unfamiliar black van with a narrow yellow stripe around town at around the time of the disappearance, and someone saw it fairly close to the post office where Cecil was abducted. No such van is licensed in Night Vale, but there are many in Desert Bluffs fitting that description, all previously owned by StrexCorp.”

“So we’re back to where we started? StrexCorp? But it was dissolved!”

“It really could be anyone—most of the vans were sold at a recent company auction when all their assets were liquidated by the Erikas.”

“Well, then, get those auction records! Check each one! Find the owner of that van!”

There was a sigh from the other end of the line. “Listen, Dana. We don’t know if that van even took Cecil. We all love the guy, and I know he was a close friend of yours—”

“Carlos is here.”

There was a long silence at the other end. “What?” the Council leader finally said.

“Carlos the scientist. He’s in my parlor. Just got back from the desert otherworld, would you believe?”

“Oh.” There was another long pause. “I’ll run through those auction records myself, right away.”

“Yeah, you’d better,” Dana growled, and hung up.

 

~~~~****~~~~

 

When Carlos next slipped into wakefulness, he wasn’t sure where he was at first. He wasn’t lying on the hard sand of the desert otherworld, nor was he wrapped in the soft warmth of his and Cecil’s bed— _Cecil_.

Carlos’ eyes snapped wide open and he jerked upright so quickly the edges of his vision blurred gray again.

“Hey, hey, take it easy!”

That was Dana, moving around the coffee table to drop a plate of eggs and wheat-free toast crackers in front of him.

“Eat up, and then we’ll go see those angels—um, Erikas.”

Any initial wellbeing Carlos had felt upon first waking was quickly swamped by the return of the adrenaline shooting through his system.

His stomach felt tight and small, but he forced down the breakfast with a strained smile. Dana was still working on her plate when he’d finished, so he excused himself to the bathroom. He stared into the mirror at this unkempt version of himself, half-surprised Dana had even recognized him. He washed his face and ran a few tangled fingers through his hair to get it to fall into some sort of symmetry. He finally gave up with a sigh and returned to the living room where Dana was pulling her boots on.

“We’ll stop by Old Woman Josie’s first, and then go to City Hall in case the Council’s got any new information. Last I heard, they think he might have been abducted by someone driving a StrexCorp van.”

Carlos nodded tightly. He knew the odds of finding a missing person dropped exponentially after the first 72 hours; two weeks was an impossible eternity. They would be lucky to even find a body.

He took a deep breath to quash the bile rising in his throat at the idea, and he squeezed his eyes shut as he followed Dana outside.

 

~~~~****~~~~

 

Old Woman Josie was pleasantly surprised to see Carlos returned from the desert otherworld, and expressed her condolences by offering him a selection of corn bread.

“I’m sure we’ll get him back in a jiffy, dear,” she said comfortingly, patting Carlos’ elbow. “He used to get in all sorts of trouble as a boy, dear me, I remember when he tried to interview the Shape in Grove Park when it first arrived—”

As much as Carlos would have liked to hear stories about young Cecil’s journalistic exploits, he was far more concerned with present Cecil’s safety. “Josie, we were wondering if the angels—sorry, Erikas—know anything about where Cecil might be.”

Josie paused in her story and looked up shrewdly at Carlos, seeming to measure his worth with her eyes. After a long moment, she pursed her lips in an approving manner and gave him a small nod.

“Erika!” she called over her shoulder. “The scientist wants to know if you know anything about dear Cecil’s disappearance.”

An angel folded its way through the narrow doorway into the room, its terrible head and wings seeming to fill the whole space.

“Carlos here is trying to find Cecil,” Josie repeated, gesturing at the scientist, who for his part was trying to seem earnest and non-threatening.

“Do you know where he is, or if he’s still…alive?” Carlos forced the words out, feeling sick to his stomach.

The angel cocked its head at him and then its long mouth opened. “He is alive,” it said slowly, in a voice seemed to contain its own echo.

Carlos felt a huge weight lift off him and actually let out a huge shaky breath. He might not know where Cecil was, but at least he was _alive._ He had never been so grateful to hear the word in his entire life.

“The radio host is with the scientist,” Erika continued.

It took Carlos, still trying to process the last statement, several seconds to follow. Then he caught up, and frowned. Had the angel not understood? “I’m _looking_ for Cecil,” Carlos clarified. “He went missing two weeks ago.”

“He is with the scientist,” the angel confirmed, tilting its head now the other way, as though listening to some private signal. After a moment: “The radio host helped us. We will help you find him.”

“Well, thank you, but—”

Old Woman Josie held up a hand, and Carlos fell into a bemused silence.

“Cecil’s with a scientist,” Josie said. “Do you really think you were the only one?”

Carlos stared at her. “My team’s all gone or dead. I didn’t think—there’s no one else in Night Vale, is there?”

Josie shrugged.

“The scientist who wears black,” the Erika said. Carlos was still confused. “Your coat, but black,” the angel continued, sounding a bit tetchy.

Carlos glanced down at his lab coat and looked up, brow furrowed. “I don’t—”

“Oh, it’s your double in Desert Bluffs,” the angel said, exasperated. “Seriously, you try to be mysterious and it just doesn’t work, does it?”

“I have a double in Desert Bluffs?” Carlos took a step back in shock, running that through his head. Was his double friendly? Think of all the work he could do with two of himself, all the _science_ —but then it hit him that there would be no better person to lure Cecil away from Night Vale with, for whatever the reason.

Carlos’ mouth set. “This double, where is he?”

The angel gave him a strange look and didn’t respond. Carlos made a ‘well?’ face and the angel ruffled its wings in an offended manner.

“We see the truth of things, we’re not Google Maps! He’s probably in Desert Bluffs, though, I mean, think about it!”

There was a sudden screeching noise, and everyone jumped and looked over at Dana, who had been leaning against the doorframe this whole time. “Sorry,” she muttered, pulling her phone out of her pocket, tapping the screen to stop the screeching noise, and raising it to her ear. “Hello?” A pause. “Yes…Yes, we figured that out here, the Erikas’ve been helping…pencil—er, forbidden writing stick—anybody?” She looked at Josie and then Carlos, mimicking writing with her free hand.

Carlos pulled a pen and scrap of paper from his lab coat pocket and handed them over. “I never had these,” he muttered guiltily, and Dana gave him a wink as she began scribbling something down, making “hmm”ing noises into the cell phone as she did. Then: “Awesome, thank you so much, I’ll let Carlos know, yes….send them over to Josie’s a little later, I think we’ll be leaving this evening…okay, thanks again.” She hung up and handed the note to Carlos. “This is the address of the proud new owner of a black StrexCorp van, Diego Ramirez, and guess what? He’s your spitting image.”

 

~~~~****~~~~

 

ONE WEEK AGO

 

“Who am I?” The man’s voice was sharp and angry.

“Carlos’ double,” Cecil said brokenly, for the hundredth time. His entire body was on fire and his vision kept blurring, but he wasn’t going to give this man the satisfaction of breaking him. That was what he kept repeating over and over in his head, anyway. It was the last coherent thought he remembered having in a long time.

The man dug the knife harder into his side until the pain was white-hot and his vision was blurring to the same color.

“Who _am_ I?”

“StrexCorp—double—” Cecil gasped as the knife went deeper and he felt consciousness slip away from him.

Unfortunately, he came to only seconds later, the pain from his side blazing through his head and muddling his thoughts.

He ached, oh, he ached everywhere; he _burned_. It seemed no part of his body had been spared, every inch filleted to the nerve. He didn’t sleep anymore, just dropped into broken spells of blessed unconsciousness mixed with sudden, abrupt awakenings filled with searing pain. He was also shaking all the time now, and he couldn’t remember a time he hadn’t felt hot and feverish, despite the chilliness of the room. The shaking and overheating just made him want to die even more.

“ _Who am I?_ ” The knife was up near his jaw line now, pressing into his neck until he could feel the beating of his terrified heart against the cold metal.

Cecil wanted to defy him. He really did, but the crazed look in those perfect eyes was unyielding. He knew he would break sooner or later. It had been days. Maybe even weeks; he wasn’t sure anyway. But nobody had come for him. Not Dana, or the interns, or the Sheriff’s Secret Police—not even Steve Carlsberg or his own sister. He would die here, all alone and forgotten by his own town and all his friends; he felt the truth of it in his soul.

He pictured Carlos—the real Carlos—striding around in some otherworldly desert, taking samples and doing science. The thought didn’t bring him an ounce of happiness anymore. Carlos was lost to him. No one was going to rescue him. It was simply not possible anymore. It had been too long, and there was so little left to rescue anyway. Cecil held the image of his lover in his mind a moment more, and then closed his eyes. With a terrible shudder that seemed to rock him to his very core, Cecil wished Carlos all the best in the world, and let him go.

A single hot tear slipped down Cecil’s cheek, aiming for the cold blade still pressed against his throat.

“Carlos,” Cecil choked out, his throat closing on the words. “You’re Carlos.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Diego is the creation of tumblr user videntefernandez. She mostly portrays him as a businessman, I believe, whereas I consider him to be a scientist, so mostly I just pilfered his name and a couple characteristics.


	3. What They Found In Desert Bluffs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the most blood-soaked chapter, and it's also fairly angsty (but the angstiest part is yet to come, hehehe); consider yourself warned.

The van they’d selected for their rescue mission was pure black, one of the Sheriff’s Secret Police’s. They thought it’d fit in the best with the similar ones in Desert Bluffs, and hoped it would allow them to escape unwanted attention for as long as possible.

The interior was surprisingly comfortable, with a row of padded benches lining either side, and cup holders to boot.

Carlos carefully took a seat near the door. Three angels settled down next to him, and four Sheriff’s Secret Policemen filled the bench opposite, balaclavas pulled down tight over their faces and short black capes carefully arranged behind them. A couple started sharpening long knives.

Carlos’ stomach was a knot of nerves and worry, though if that was because they were going to rescue Cecil or because it looked like they were a bunch of Navy SEALs about to storm an enemy base and he was a _scientist_ , for God’s sake!, he wasn’t sure.

The last secret policeman climbed into the van, hauling what looked like a net full of grenades. He brought it around to everyone, and each policeman selected several, though Carlos and the angels politely declined.

The policeman shrugged, but tugged a long knife out of his belt and handed it to Carlos just the same. “ _They_ don’t exist,” the policeman said, jerking his head at the angels. “But if they did, they’d have divine powers. You, however, do not. You need something to defend yourself with.”

Carlos swallowed and took the knife.

The policeman smiled through his balaclava and clapped him on the shoulder a bit harder than was absolutely necessary. “Don’t worry; you’ll be fine.”

Carlos was less than reassured, but at that moment Dana appeared at the open doors of the van, snapping a magazine into place on a sleek pistol.

“I’m coming with you,” she announced, testing the action on the handgun’s slide with a critical eye.

“You’ll need a better weapon,” pointed out one of the secret policemen without missing a beat. “Guns don’t kill people.”

She gave him a long look. “You must be new,” she said finally. “And we’ll see about that. I’m the Mayor; guns will kill people if I say they do.”

 The secret policeman shrugged as if to say _it’s your own funeral_ , and Dana moved her attention to the others in the cramped interior of the van.

“Herbert, you’re with me. And one of the Erikas too, please. We’ll follow in the second van.”

“Second van?” questioned the secret policeman that must be Herbert as he climbed obediently out of the vehicle.

“The getaway vehicle for the people in the first van when Murdock crashes it; you know he’s a terrible driver.”

Herbert made a sound of agreement and followed her as she walked back out of view around the side of the van. “I still say we should have taken a helicopter…” he muttered. An angel climbed out of the van and trailed after them, the last rays of the dying sun giving its wings a gleaming golden quality.

One of the remaining secret policemen slid the van door closed and then moved to the opposite side of the compartment to the tinted window separating them from Murdock in the driver’s seat.

“Whenever you’re ready, Mur. Do try to avoid hitting _every_ sign, though, would you? It’s a new van.”

A moment later the van pulled forward and everyone made sure they were securely strapped in. Carlos carefully sheathed his knife and tucked it into a pocket in his lab coat. He sincerely hoped he wouldn’t need it.

Murdock didn’t turn out to be as bad a driver as Dana had indicated, though they never seemed to dip below sixty miles per hour, even in town. Fairly soon they hit a long straight stretch of road, and Carlos pictured the desert fanning out on either side of them as Night Vale shrunk into the distance behind them. On to Desert Bluffs.

Carlos dropped his head down and studied his hands, listening with half an ear as the Sheriff’s Secret Policemen chatted amiably about each other’s children and spouses and the new City Council laws. The Erikas hummed to themselves or preened their wings, seemingly unconcerned with the danger that lay ahead.

Carlos wished he had something of Cecil’s with him, something he could run through his hands, but he had been in too much of a hurry to take anything from their house before he’d run off to find Dana. And when morning had come, they’d stayed at Josie’s house while the Sherriff’s Secret Police sent reconnaissance missions to Desert Bluffs to check out the properties associated with this Diego Ramirez.

Carlos’ fingers ran over the strip of lighter skin on his left wrist where he used to wear his watch, the last true timepiece in Night Vale. He tried to reassure himself that, even though he had nothing of Cecil’s, at least Cecil had something of his.

After what seemed like eons but also only minutes, the van began taking sharp turns and he knew they were in Desert Bluffs.

One of the secret policemen lowered the tinted glass separating the back of the van from the front, and began relaying directions to Murdock, who had many features in common with a giant spider.

Trying not to seem rude by staring, Carlos looked away quickly and returned his gaze to his hands.

“Okay, here’s the plan,” one of the secret policemen said, leaning forward so everyone could see him. “Geoffrey, you and Nicu go in first; Carlos goes with you.” He glanced at the scientist, and Carlos nodded gratefully. He also cast a surprised glance in the direction of the secret policeman who’d responded to the name of Geoffrey—he was the officer assigned to his and Cecil’s house and Carlos’ lab. “Erikas go in next, Herbert and I will keep up the rear,” the squad leader continued. “Find and retrieve Cecil, that’s our number one priority. If we’ve timed it about right, it should be dark now, but let’s make this quick. We’ve got eyes on Diego on the other side of town, but we don’t want to take more time than we need. We’re on the edge of town, and we’ve scrambled the security cameras and painted the appropriate blood sigils, so we shouldn’t have too much trouble, but we don’t want to push our luck. Any questions? Good.”

Too few minutes later, the van screeched to a sudden halt and the secret policeman on the end threw the door open.

The only illumination seemed to be the pale circles cast by the faded yellow streetlights lining the road, but none of the Secret Policemen seemed to have a problem seeing, as they quickly bundled out of the van with the ease of the carefully practiced. Carlos climbed out after them, feeling strangely naked as he jogged after the two shapes he thought were Geoffrey and Nicu. It was difficult to tell them all apart in their matching black cat suits and balaclavas.

The secret policemen rushed for the door of a nearby large gray building, the side of which was spray-painted with a frankly quite disturbing cartoon mural depicting a smiling sun looking down over rows of productive workers. In the dim light, the sun’s painted smile seemed cold, hard, and malevolent. Carlos shivered and looked over to his left, where Desert Bluffs proper lay, all dark shadows and tacky yellow paint.

One the policemen—Herbert, he thought—threw his weight against the door, but it refused to budge. A number pad was built into the wall on the right side of the door, and Nicu wasted no time in pulling out his dagger and smashing it with the hilt. The keypad sparked angrily, but the door obligingly clicked open.

Carlos frowned as Geoffrey threw the door open. This seemed too easy—surely there’d be a different protocol to follow if the circuit to the door was broken without the password being entered; at least, that’s what he’d do—

Carlos surged forward and grabbed Geoffrey by the arm as he moved to step through the door.

“Wait—it’s booby trapped!” Carlos yanked Geoffrey roughly backwards, the secret policeman stumbling a bit. He opened his mouth to object, processed what Carlos had said, and stepped back further.

“How do you know?” asked the leader of the secret police squad, whose name Carlos didn’t know.

“Er, it’s _probably_ booby trapped,” Carlos clarified. “Breaking the keypad probably tripped some sort of secondary circuit—it’s what I’d do, at least, and this is my double we’re talking about.”

The squad leader indicated the open door. “Well, can you check?”

Carlos looked back at the door, open and inviting. He edged forwards and peered inside; as he carefully pushed the door open all the way and then quickly retracted his hand, the lights inside flickered on automatically. It was a lab of some sort; that much was obvious. Long tables lined the room, piled with computers and microscopes and bell jars. It was quite clearly a state-of-the-art facility, everything gleaming and white. It was the sort of lab someone with limited state funding like himself dreamed of. There was something that looked like a 3-D printer on a nearby table, a large centrifuge, and—was that a high-frequency laser array?

Carlos felt himself leaning further inside, trying to get a good look at the array, momentarily distracted from following his own advice.

He felt it a moment before it happened. It was just the slightest tingle in the air as all the electrons were stripped from their constituent atoms, a faint bitter taste touching his mouth as all the hairs on his arms stood on end. Carlos jerked his head back just as a massive bolt of blue-tinged lightning surged through the doorway, lancing from top to bottom faster than the eye could follow.

Carlos staggered back as quickly as he could, the Sheriff’s Secret Policemen following suit, one grabbing his arm to pull him back farther. Another spark jumped from top to bottom, electric white and blue, fizzling in the air, crackling as tiny tendrils stretched away from the main bolt and faded out.

“Gods of bloodstones!” gasped one of the policemen, and a moment later Carlos saw several knives and grenades in gloved hands around him.

“Hold on, hold on, it’s just plasma!” Carlos explained hastily to the terrified secret policemen, trying to calm his own racing heart. “It’s just science, shooting it won’t help, I promise! Breaking the keypad must have tripped a secondary system that charged the doorframe…there must be metal plates above and below the door, one positively charged, the other negatively. Then opposites attract and hey, presto—! Electricity.”

“How do we…get past?” asked Geoffrey at length, sounding very much like he did not want to know the answer. Carlos noted that none of the secret policemen had lowered their weapons, and hardly blamed them. The charges contained in those plates must be huge, easily enough to kill a person in under a second.

“Well…” Carlos swallowed down his fear and inched closer, trying to get a look at the metal plates without getting close enough to tempt the interest of the electricity. “Cutting the power would be easiest, I guess, or maybe there’s a failsafe—” He hadn’t stopped speaking before Nicu was back at the keypad, this time with a hacksaw he’d produced from somewhere on his person. Carlos flinched as multi-colored iridescent sparks flew from the panel, but then the streaks of plasma abruptly flickered and died.

“Must have cut that pesky wire,” Nicu said with a shaky smile.

Carlos gave him a weak nod and approached the door more carefully this time, kicking some dirt through first to make sure the device was well and truly disabled.

Once inside, his attention was again arrested by the gleaming instruments, but he took a deep breath and thought of Cecil, and the equipment was immediately forgotten. This Diego could have all the equipment in the world if he could have Cecil back in one piece.

Carlos stalked carefully through the lab, keeping a close eye out for traps. Nicu and Geoffrey trailed behind him, knives at the ready, looking every which way. He heard the rest of the policemen and the Erikas come in after them, some prodding the equipment with their weapons.

The room ended in a set of heavy double doors, which Carlos carefully swung open.

The next room was smaller, about half the size of the first, though still filled with lab tables.

Carlos’ eyes immediately went to a row of silver cages standing against the right-hand wall. Beside him, Geoffrey recoiled, Nicu whispered a prayer in a language Carlos didn’t understand, and one of the angels raised its wings protectively.

Carlos tilted his head.

The row of cages, as far as he could see, contained perfectly normal animals—fluffy cats and kittens, wide-eyed puppies, artfully tweeting birds, and rats pawing at their cages. In fact, it was one of the most normal selections of animals he’d seen since his arrival in Night Vale.

Carlos remembered Khoshekh and his venom sacs and spine ridges; he remembered Murdock, the large hairy spider currently driving their getaway truck. He remembered the deadly puppy infestations. He took a step back.

The last of the Erikas came through the door, and it swung shut behind them with a resounding click.

“Don’t move,” Carlos said, but it was too late.

As the door clicked shut, a red light came on over the silver cages and a warning siren filled the room. At the same moment, all the cage doors opened.

Almost immediately, a swarm of animals descended on them: puppies and kittens and white lab rats and finches and rabbits, all eager to greet their saviors. Carlos felt true fear.

The secret policemen closed ranks around him, each shaking in horror but trying to hide it, raising grenades and knives for their last stand. As the animals descended on them, eyes wild and paws and feet and wings thumping, Carlos knew they had no chance.

Then the angels closed around them.

Carlos’ view was obscured by long white and gold feathers, and a moment later he and the secret policemen were completely enclosed as the Erikas raised their dappled wings and bracelet-ringed arms and chanted a few words in unison, short and deep.

A strange golden glow seemed to rise around them, and a moment later it flared to a brilliant white. Carlos ducked his head, unable to stare at the brightness any longer. When it had receded enough for him to chance looking up again, the angels were gone. So were the animals.

A single golden feather drifted lazily through the air. The secret policemen around him were similarly lowering their arms, blinking blearily around them in the sudden stillness. Even the blaring alarm had stopped, though the red light above the cages remained on.

For a long moment they all just stood there, trying to stop shaking. Then Carlos took a deep breath and brushed himself down. “Well,” he said, trying to still process that the angels appeared to actually _have_ divine power, “onto the next room, I guess.”

The next room, it turned out, was a hallway.

Carlos carefully peered around the edge of the double doors, incredibly wary. The hallway seemed harmless enough, just a short white corridor with several doors on either side, but Carlos wasn’t taking any chances.

“Is there something out here we can throw in?” Carlos asked, turning back to the secret policemen. Herbert grabbed a plastic test tube stand and handed it over to the scientist.

Carlos took it and, after a test swing, opened the door and threw it out into the hallway. He immediately pulled the doors almost all the way closed as the stand clattered to the linoleum floor twenty feet away.

Carlos held his breath and counted. The secret policemen behind him shifted uneasily, peering through the glass windows in the doors, but Carlos didn’t move. After exactly twenty seconds, there was a faint click and the sprinklers in the hallway turned on.

Carlos flinched back, pulling the doors all the way closed as the liquid splashed against them.

“Oh, it’s just water,” said Nicu, sounding relieved. “That’s not so bad.”

Carlos, however, had been a scientist long enough to know that a clear liquid in a science lab was hardly ever water. He shook his head. “Look at the test tube stand,” he directed, and the policeman shuffled closer.

Out in the hallway, the stand was smoking. Lazy white coils swirled around it as the liquid struck it, and even the linoleum flooring seemed to be having adverse effects to the liquid—patches were turning gray, and a thin layer of what looked like steam was misting along the floor.

“You ever seen water do that?” Carlos asked grimly. Nicu had paled considerably, and took several hurried steps back.

After a couple more seconds, there was another click and the sprinklers shut off. Carlos and Geoffrey peered through the windows at the gently sizzling hallway.

“No way we’ll ever get through there,” Geoffrey said, sounding certain.

“I’m not so sure,” Carlos said, suddenly feeling he was facing an enemy he knew how to defeat. “It looks like it’s an acid—” Carlos peered out the window again, trying to gauge the rate at which the test tube stand was breaking apart— “so all we need is an appropriate base.” It was just chemistry—and chemistry Carlos knew.

He turned back to the secret policemen, who were looking at him like he was speaking another language. “Here, somebody hold the door shut,” Carlos instructed. “Luckily for us, we just walked through a chemistry lab!”

Carlos strode back past the row of open cages and into the first room, where one of the secret policemen waited, dagger in hand, covering the exit.

“I’m just looking for something—hmm, let’s try sodium hydroxide,” Carlos told him. “It’s a white powder, could come in little pellets, probably in a bottle in one of these cabinets…” Carlos trailed off as he detoured to the closest one, pulling it open and shifting through the various bottles.

He heard the secret policeman cross to another of the cabinets, shifting through stuff. “Sodium what?” he asked.

“Hydroxide,” Carlos said, shifting his gaze to another shelf. “There’s a bunch of fire sprinklers shooting acid in the hallway up ahead. Fun guy, this Diego. Smart, though, I’ll give him that.” Carlos shoved a row of bottles to the side. “I doubt anybody but a scientist could get past these—”

“Sodium hydroxide, you said?” the secret policeman interrupted.

Carlos’ head shot up. “Yes!” He came over and took the bottle from the policeman, inspecting the label for himself. He unscrewed the top and peered in cautiously and then quickly replaced it. “That’ll do. Thanks,” he said, and hurried back into the room with the cages.

“Found some,” Carlos said by way of explanation. “Okay, open the door.”

The secret policemen looked like he was crazy, but Carlos gestured hurriedly, and Geoffrey obeyed, pulling the closest door open.

Carlos approached the edge of the threshold carefully, and cautiously unscrewed the bottle. Holding his breath, he shook the bottle, and a fine white powder cascaded out.

Carlos jerked back as the powder hit the acid pooling over the floor. There was a sharp sizzling noise, and the liquid erupted into white smoke. Carlos waved a hand in front of his face and gestured to Geoffrey to close the door again.

After a few minutes it looked like most of the smoke had cleared, and Carlos instructed the secret policeman to open it again. Pulling the lapel of his lab coat up over his nose this time, Carlos ventured cautiously into the hallway, stepping onto the part he’d sprinkled the powder on.

He shook out some more powder over the next bit of linoleum, and waited for the sizzling to stop and the smoke to clear a bit before proceeding cautiously.

He was halfway down the corridor before he realized that no one was following him.

“It’s perfectly safe!” Carlos called, letting his lab coat fall back into its usual position and shaking the bottle encouragingly at them, but the three secret policemen only clustered more tightly around the door. “Just neutralizing the acid with something of equal and opposite strength,” he explained, but they still looked unconvinced.

Carlos shrugged and continued forward, sprinkling until he had cleared a path to each of the four doors leading off of the hallway.

The last of the smoke was clearing as Geoffrey crept into the hallway. Carlos looked up in surprise as the secret policeman joined him, but Geoffrey only nodded stoically and kept his eyes straight ahead of him, as though looking down would cause him to fall into the sections still sizzling with acid.

Carlos patted him gratefully on the elbow and turned back to the four doors. “After you.”

Geoffrey edged closer to the nearest door and carefully opened it, still on the lookout for booby-traps. The room beyond looked like an office of some sort. There was a large wooden desk, a row of filing cabinets, and a pile of paperwork on the desk. They tried the other three doors as well, but they all appeared to be offices. No sign of Cecil anywhere.

“Your boss said he was here, right?” said Carlos at last, feeling a bit deflated.

“He narrowed it down, and the angels—er, Erikas—confirmed it. Said they could feel him nearby.”

Carlos frowned, looking around the fourth office, eyes skimming over the bookcases and filing cabinets. “He’s got to be here, though,” he said at last. “Why’d you bother booby-trapping the place like this if there was nothing to hide?”

Geoffrey shrugged, shifting back and forth uneasily on the still-smoking white powder on the linoleum.

Carlos let his eyes wander over the office, landing on the polished wooden floor and cheerful yellow wallpaper—this was by far the fanciest of the four offices. A high-backed chair rested behind a large mahogany desk that was way too expensive-looking for a scientist, no matter how prestigious. The corner office, as it were. The boss’s office. Diego’s office.

More out of curiosity than anything, Carlos walked in, moving around the desk and ruffling through some papers. Mostly they were staffing and finance reports, and overviews of projects to be examined and updated…

Carlos shuffled through the rest of the papers, but there was nothing interesting, either scientifically or pertaining to Cecil. He sighed and gave up, letting his arms drop back down to his sides. He had to be around here somewhere, he knew, but maybe he just wasn’t looking in the right places.

Carlos moved to walk back around the desk, aiming to examine the bookshelves next, when he felt the floor creak slightly under his weight. He frowned and stepped back, bouncing up and down on his toes. The floor creaked loudly. Something like excitement shot through Carlos as he quickly rolled the high-backed chair off to the side and peeled back the edge of an old-fashioned rug away to reveal a wooden trapdoor set flush with the floorboards.

“Mad scientists always have secret evil labs,” he muttered to himself as he reached down and tugged the trapdoor open. Classic.

“I found something!” Carlos called. “A trapdoor. I’m going down. You guys’ll be okay up here for a few minutes?” Carlos asked, itching to free Cecil. Because suddenly he knew that this was where Cecil would be, knew it as certainly as if he had put the radio host there himself.

“Yeah. You want me to come with?”

Carlos glanced up at Geoffrey, who was looking worriedly up at the sprinklers as though they might spring back to life.

“You’d better stay here in case I get locked in or something,” Carlos said. He wasn’t really that concerned, but a part of him wanted his reunion with Cecil to be private. He could always shout if he needed help.

Geoffrey seemed to understand Carlos’ intentions, nodding at him and drawing his knife as he planted himself firmly in the middle of the doorframe, standing guard.

Carlos turned his gaze back to the steep wooden steps descending underneath the floorboards, and carefully started down.

As he reached the bottom, a dim fluorescent light flickered automatically to life. A short hallway stretched in front of him, ending after only four doors, mirroring the hallway above it. It looked like there were plans to expand further; the end of the corridor was all rock and sand and struts, and the walls of the hallway were smooth, unpainted drywall. The doors, however, were solid metal and looked like they meant business. The first two doors were open, showing small, empty rooms with no windows and only a couple of dim fluorescents that flickered dimly to life when he stuck his head in.

“Cecil?” he called softly, feeling his heart rate pick up as he neared the second two doors, which were closed.

The first one he checked wasn’t even locked, just swung open with a soft creak to reveal another empty room.

He felt his breath catch in his throat as he reached the very last door. This was it. Cecil hadto be here. He _had_ to be. Carlos’ hand dropped to the metal handle, and the door clicked open easily. He had no idea what he was expecting.

He threw the door open and took a quick step forward to activate the lights.

And there he was.

“Cecil?” Carlos whispered, quickly closing the distance between them. The radio host was slumped over in a blood-soaked wooden chair in the center of the room, head listing forward and off to one side, utterly motionless.

Carlos carefully put a hand on either side of Cecil’s face, feeling his hands growing sticky as tilted his head up to the light.

The man’s nose and cheeks were almost entirely obscured with streaks of dried blood and tears, but it was unmistakably Cecil—neatly dyed hair, handsome nose and slender eyebrows and all, each line of his slack face painfully familiar to Carlos.

“Cecil, Cecil, oh God, _Cecil_!” His eyes followed the tracks of every tear that had rolled down Cecil’s bloodied cheeks, suddenly feeling the pain that must have elicited each as though it were his own.

Just then Carlos noticed that Cecil’s cheeks were cold in his palms—unnaturally cold. Somehow, when the Erikas had said that Cecil was alive, he’d taken that to mean that he was okay—he’d never considered that Cecil might have expired between their proclamation and the present.

Carlos felt his blood turn to ice at the thought as he quickly tilted the weight of Cecil’s head onto his left hand while he searched the radio host’s neck furiously for a pulse with his right, hunting for a faint throbbing under all the dried blood and scabs, a halfhearted flutter, a weak palpitation, anything at all…

 _Please, please, oh please, don’t be dead, don’t be dead, come on Cecil, come on, oh God, Cecil, please—There!_ Weak and thready, sure, but a pulse! He was alive!

Carlos let out a sharp sigh of relief, but didn’t feel an ounce less tense.

Terrified at what he might see but compelled to look anyway, Carlos felt his eyes drop to the shredded remains of what might once have charitably been called a dress shirt, but was now simply a second skin for Cecil, torn in all the same places and crusted to him with the same blood. His upper chest was a mess of dark gashes, and even as he watched, more blood welled up from the deepest cuts as his chest struggled to rise and fall in tiny, broken movements.

“Oh, Cecil, what have they _done to you_ …” Carlos’ hand dropped involuntarily to Cecil’s shoulder, feeling fresh blood smear onto his fingertips as they trailed down his lover’s neck, and Carlos felt his own throat close. Every inch of Cecil seemed caked in blood, both old and new, and the dark stain under the chair was unspeakably huge…

Carlos wanted to look Cecil over further, take stock of each and every cut and assess him for major damage, but he didn’t have time…someone from Desert Bluffs could show up at any moment, and he needed to get Cecil out of here and back to Night Vale as quickly as humanly possible. That he needed medical help was painfully obvious—Carlos knew moving the radio host in this state was risky at best, but there was no way on heaven or earth he was leaving Cecil here to die alone in this pit.

Carlos’ gentle attempts to stir Cecil into consciousness seemed futile, so the scientist let Cecil’s head drop gently back onto his shoulders as he pulled his knife from his lab coat pocket. He made short work of the leather ties binding Cecil’s wrists and ankles to the hateful chair, wincing as the movement caused fresh blood to well up along the raw red marks where the straps had been. Carlos’ fingers hovered wretchedly over the blood-stained face of his watch still on Cecil’s wrist, and he had to swallow hard to keep down the bile rising in his throat. He focused on carefully prying his boyfriend’s limbs out of the positions they’d been cramped in for the last two weeks, apologizing profusely in case Cecil could hear him.

When that was done, he sheathed the knife, tucked it back into his lab coat, and gathered Cecil up into his arms. The way Cecil stuck to the chair, sticky with fresh and dried blood alike, turned Carlos’ stomach. The scientist slipped one arm under Cecil’s knees and the other around his shoulders, pulling him up as high as he could and letting the radio host’s head droop against Carlos’ chest. He grunted as he took Cecil’s full weight, though it was less than he remembered, and considerably less than he would have liked, considering the circumstances. Carlos readjusted his grip and staggered back out into the hallway.

Getting up the steep stairs to the trapdoor was tricky, and he again cursed his lack of athletic ability as he hauled himself up one step at a time, feeling like he was about to tip over with Cecil’s weight putting him off balance.

Somehow he made it, and then he was in the office, struggling to get around the desk without falling over.

 “Did you find him?” Geoffrey asked worriedly as Carlos came into view. Then his eyes dropped to Cecil, motionless and limp in Carlos’ arms. “Is he okay?” Carlos could hear the genuine concern in the other man’s voice, and was unspeakably grateful for it.

“I don’t…know,” Carlos said, his voice breaking as he adjusted his grip on the radio host, painfully aware of the blood already soaking through his own lab coat. “He’s alive, though.”

Geoffrey gave Carlos a small reassuring smile, but it never reached his worried eyes. “Come on, then. Time for the getaway.”

Geoffrey let Carlos take the lead, making sure there were no surprises coming from behind. Nicu, who had waited in the room with the cages, helped Carlos through the two sets of double doors and into the main room, making no comment on either Cecil or Carlos’ stricken appearance. Herbert only offered him a grave nod on his way past.

Carlos started across the lab, feeling his breaths get shorter and tighter as he crossed the space. Man, he was really out of shape. Or was that panic he felt growing in his throat? He really hoped he wasn’t going to faint again, he had to keep it together now, keep it together, for Cecil…

A fuzzy feeling settled over his brain, and Carlos felt his steps grow slower…it occurred to him that the secret policeman who’d stayed out here was no longer around…

Carlos glanced down at Cecil, at the way his head tilted against his own lab-coated chest, at the way the dark blood had smeared into his beautiful hair. God, he hoped he was going to be okay. Carlos took a deep breath and readjusted his grip, his eyes drifting lazily to the hand of the arm he had wrapped around Cecil’s shoulders. He gazed dimly at his own blood-smeared fingers and blue-flushed fingernails, wondering if Cecil—blue!

Carlos blinked rapidly to be sure, and then let himself drop onto one knee. “It’s gas!” he shouted. “Everyone get down! There’s gas! Get near the floor; oxygen’s heavier!”

He carefully laid Cecil down on the cold tile floor as he followed his own advice, dropping onto his hands and knees and letting his head fall forward, taking deep breaths. He heard the three secret policemen behind him follow suit.

From his new vantage point on the floor, Carlos could see the secret policeman he had missed before, slumped up against a nearby lab table. He could also see, just a few feet beyond him, the main exit door, the outline of which was lit up with dim red lights—it was sealed.

“Okay,” Carlos said once the ringing in his ears had died down. “We need to figure out where this gas is coming from. It’s odorless, tasteless, and colorless. Could be anything, pretty much. Everyone look around—stay near the floor, though—look for an open valve or something…but for God’s sake, don’t make a spark; it might be flammable, and there’s too much in here already for it to go up without taking us with it.”

After that huge speech, Carlos felt himself getting dizzy again and pressed his face closer to the floor, sucking in a breath of oxygen before pushing himself up to look around the room. He saw Geoffrey, Nicu, and Herbert doing the same out of the corner of his eye, creeping off between the tables in search of the source of the deadly gas, looking like bizarre doubled-over frogs as they tried to follow Carlos’ directions.

Carlos swung his head around to survey the room more carefully, looking for anything suspicious. For the third time in under an hour, Carlos’ eyes were drawn the high-intensity laser array in the corner, his gaze sweeping along the smooth, gleaming contours of the equipment—

Carlos stopped, letting himself study the paneling closer. He dropped back to the floor, took another deep breath, gave Cecil’s unconscious form a last long look, and pushed himself to his feet.

He dashed across the room without taking a breath and dropped to his knees near the laser array, eyes skimming the various gauges and knobs. He stopped when he reached the tiny valve with CO printed underneath it, the valve that was turned to the “open” position even though nothing was hooked up. He placed his hand in front of the valve just to be sure, and felt the pressure of the deadly gas blowing onto his palm. He wasted no time turning the valve to the “closed” position with a click.

Mission accomplished. Carlos fell back to the floor in triumph and took a deep breath. Dizziness immediately filled his head, and he realized with a sudden surge of panic that the concentration of gas must be stronger here—he was far too close—

He glanced blearily over at the door leading to the street, still ringed in those red lights, still sealed shut. And even though he had stopped more gas from entering the room, he realized with a tremor, there was still too much carbon monoxide in here already, too much to survive much longer…

Carlos’ spinning vision fell on a nearby wall, his eyes searching wildly until he found what he was looking for in his distorted vision: the large, green, semi-translucent button he knew instinctively read “in case of gas” underneath—the ventilator button.

Carlos started crawling towards the button, but his dizziness only increased, hazy gray lines streaking across his vision with each gasping breath he took. He fixed his eyes on the gleaming green button, made it his whole world and moved towards it, told himself he was going to reach it, he was _,_ he _was_ —

Carlos’ eyes flipped open. He was lying on the floor, face pressed flat against the cold white tiles. He took a ragged breath and heaved himself shakily back up onto his hands and knees, pulling himself forward, closer to the colorful, gleaming button…

The button was so close now, but also so high. Carlos took a deep breath that, even as his mind swayed back and forth drunkenly, he felt certain was mostly poison. He pushed himself crookedly to his feet, using a nearby table as leverage, his vision blurring as he demanded that his body work without oxygen.

Carlos reached out for the button.

His hand hit a bare patch of wall, and he realized his vision was doubling—tripling. He threw his other hand out for support, leaning heavily against the wall even as he felt himself falling back to his knees.

He wondered if he would feel it—dying, that was. He wondered if Cecil would. Cecil was already unconscious, so maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he wouldn’t even know he’d been rescued—just remember that horrible dark room as his last minutes. Maybe he would never know otherwise, never realize that Carlos _had_ come, that he had rescued him, that he hadn’t abandoned him…

Carlos was slipping further down the wall, hands searching furiously in their limited time for the smooth plastic of the button even as he felt his strength ebb away in waves…

There! He felt the button, smooth under his palm, saw all five of his hands grasping its fluorescent surface in his multiplied vision. Carlos pulled his hand back an inch and hit the button with all of his strength just as his vision blurred entirely gray and he felt himself falling. He hoped Cecil would know that Carlos had rescued him.

Carlos’ eyes jerked open, and again he found himself with his cheek flat against the cold tile floor. His muscles burned, but the hum of extractor fans buzzed in his ears, and it was the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard.

Carlos flipped over onto his side, the gray haze still trailing the edges of his vision. With a grunt of exertion, he forced himself onto his hands and knees and began crawling slowly down the nearest aisle, heading back towards the middle of the room.

He made the main aisle and flopped back onto the floor, gasping. He took a couple of seconds to simply suck in the slightly higher concentration of oxygen now that he was away from the laser array.

“It was carbon monoxide from the laser array!” Carlos shouted weakly, and then paused to take another shaky breath. “I’ve ventilated it, should be a bit, but we should be fine.” He realized abruptly that no one was listening to him. Geoffrey was slumped up against a nearby lab table, passed out, and Nicu and Herbert were nowhere to be seen. And Cecil… _God_ , Cecil was still lying right where Carlos had left him, motionless and small. The lights were brighter in here than they’d been in the basement cell, and as Carlos’ vision cleared a little he could see that Cecil was in even worse shape than he’d originally thought. The radio host was covered literally from head to foot in his own blood, not an inch of his pale skin left unmarked. It was a miracle he was still alive. He was so close to death, even now, tottering on the very brink of oblivion, unaware of his salvation.

Carlos crawled desperately towards Cecil, cursing himself as he went, cursing every wretched minute he’d ever spent in that damnable desert otherworld while Cecil was hurt and alone and, _God_ , _tortured_. All he could remember was how much he’d been _enjoying_ exploring the otherworld, finding new specimens and tucking them away for later analysis—for _weeks_. He’d known how dangerous Night Vale could be. How on earth had he justified leaving Cecil for so long?

If he could go back and steal that chemistry textbook out of his fourteen-year-old self’s hands, he would. He’d take it and tear out the pages and burn them all, and then sit his younger self down and tell him that there were things more important than science—a lesson Cecil had tried to teach him so very long ago, and one that Carlos had finally learned, but far too late.

Carlos reached Cecil and collapsed into a haphazard sitting position beside his boyfriend.

“Cecil?” he asked softly, placing a hand alongside the radio host’s cheek. If it was possible, he was even colder than before, and still absolutely motionless. Carlos frowned, his eyes sliding down to Cecil’s chest, where fresh blood was welling slowly up from the long crisscrossing gashes there.

It was then that he realized that Cecil’s chest was no longer moving up and down.

“Oh, God.”

Carlos quickly returned his attention to Cecil’s head as he hastily moved his hand in front of the radio host’s mouth, feeling for the telltale whisper of breath, or heat, or moisture. There was nothing.

Carlos felt for a pulse next, feeling his own breath coming more rapidly as he searched desperately for a tiny beat. They’d gotten this far; they were only feet from the exit, _feet_ ; he couldn’t lose Cecil now, when they were so very close. He just couldn’t.

There! He felt a small flutter beneath his fingers. That meant…

Carlos took the deepest breath he could manage and leaned over Cecil, taking all the precious oxygen from the freshly-ventilated air and breathing it into his boyfriend.

Carlos was gasping after the second breath, and his head was spinning, but there was no time, no space left for _him_ to breathe…

As he exhaled the third breath, he felt Cecil respond beneath him, just a twitch of his cold lips against his own as the radio host greedily sucked in all the air remaining in Carlos’ lungs.

Carlos pulled back and felt himself fall backwards onto the floor, gasping. There was a fog of grayness inching around his vision. Beside him, Cecil was shaking, and seemed halfway to consciousness.

At that moment there was a sharp hiss and a beep and Carlos looked up to see the main exterior door sliding open as the red emergency lights faded; the air must have reached an acceptable oxygen level.

Coughing and gasping in equal measure, Carlos staggered unsteadily to his knees and then to his feet, pulling Cecil’s broken body back into his arms as he went.

The world spun as Carlos staggered towards the exit, clutching Cecil like his life depended on it.

As soon as he stepped outside, the sudden rush of fresh night air left him dizzy and breathless.

He made it a few steps away from the building before falling back to his knees. He carefully laid Cecil out on the sidewalk before allowing himself to flop to the ground beside him, chest heaving. The oxygen was making him dizzy—it was so deliciously sweet—and it seemed he couldn’t get enough of it in his lungs to compensate for its earlier scarcity.

He crawled a little closer to Cecil and put a hand on his neck, checking his pulse while rubbing a thumb affectionately over the radio host’s jaw line, feeling the sharp stubble bristle beneath his finger.

“Come on, Cecil, we’re almost there. It’s going to be okay now.”

There was a sharp click from immediately behind his head.

“Oh, now, isn’t this adorable?” said a dark, oaky voice from behind him, and Carlos froze.

He slowly raised his hands in surrender and looked over his shoulder.

A man his exact height and build stood behind him, hair luxurious and gleaming, slicked back and dyed around the temples to hide the gray streaks Carlos knew instinctively were there. The man was wearing a black lab coat over a pinstripe suit, and was pointing a custom-engraved handgun straight at Carlos’ head.

It was more than bizarre, seeing his double; it was like looking into a mirror, except the face folded into a sneer of its own violation while Carlos still sat in shock.

“I get an alert in the middle of the night saying someone’s broken into my lab and find a couple of amateurs spying on my house, and what do I find when I arrive here but a couple of lovebirds gasping over carbon monoxide poisoning? Isn’t it a _dor_ able?”

“You’re Diego,” Carlos confirmed, mostly because he couldn’t think of anything else to say; his brain had stalled and seemed to be stuck on a loop of _we’re all going to die_.

“In the flesh. Now, you’re probably thinking I’m going to shoot you, but…” Diego trailed off, tilting the gun slightly as he spoke, the cold streetlights gleaming off the metal. “You know, I think it’ll be more fun this way.”

Carlos, suddenly deeply uncomfortable with the look Diego was giving Cecil, shifted so that he was shielding the radio host more effectively from the other scientist’s piercing gaze.

“What do you mean?” Carlos stammered, stalling for time.

Diego smiled and shrugged, gun still trained on Carlos’ forehead. “Let’s just say we’ll see if he still loves you when he wakes.”

Diego gave Carlos a smile—a terrible, almost predatory grin that put him in mind of someone who’d kick a puppy and enjoy it—and then he clicked the safety on his gun back on. He started to pull it up, had just begun to shift his weight back onto his left foot, a sign of retreat, when a sharp bang ripped through the air.

Carlos flinched down instinctively and hadn’t had time to process what had happened before Diego hit the ground next to him with a loud thump.

Carlos recoiled in horror, trying instinctively to get away from the unknown source of danger, dragging Cecil with him.

Carlos’ eyes riveted on Diego’s hand, lying palm up on the sidewalk not a foot from him, the engraved handgun still in his hand turning silver in the glare of the streetlight. Carlos’ eyes strayed in horror to the dark spray of blood that gleamed like a thousand tiny jewels on the scientist’s black lab coat and all over the sidewalk. Carlos tracked the spray automatically to its source, but it led him to where Diego’s head and shoulders had fallen outside the circle illuminated by the streetlight.

Carlos’ shocked eyes were still trying to penetrate the darkness of the shadow to make out Diego’s face when there was a great screeching of tires. Carlos jerked his head up as an unmarked black van jolted to a halt on the road directly in front of him, blending in with the night. A wild-haired head appeared in the window, brandishing a smoking gun of its own.

“Come on, come on! Carlos!” It took Carlos a good three seconds to recognize Dana’s voice; his eyes had fixated back on Diego’s silvered corpse inches away.

“ _Car_ los!”

Carlos swallowed and tore his gaze away. He forced himself into motion, pushing himself shakily to his feet and heaving Cecil into his arms for the third time that day. Cecil muttered something at the movement, and his hand clutched weakly at Carlos’ lab coat. The scientist made for the back of the van as fast as he could, keeping his eyes locked on its sleek panels to avoid catching Diego in the corner of his eye. He shifted Cecil’s weight higher as he lifted up on the door handle and pulled the van door open a couple of inches.

He shouldered it open the rest of the way and deposited Cecil quickly but carefully on the metal grating that made up the floor of the van. He then reached up and hauled himself in, stepping carefully around the unconscious radio host. He reached back, pulled the door closed behind him, and latched it.

Carlos made his way unsteadily to the front of the van, pulling open the divider separating him from Dana in the driver’s seat.

“Told you we’d need a getaway van for the getaway van,” she said with a glance over her shoulder at him. “Never trust a spider to watch your back—too many legs to operate a gun properly—say, are the others coming?”

Carlos took a shaky breath and nodded. “Any minute now, I think. There were traps—acid and electricity and gas—oh, and some horrible animals. The Erikas saved us—sort of stood around us—I don’t know what happened, they disappeared in a burst of light—”

Dana nodded brusquely, staring out the driver’s window, where a few secret policemen were visible making their way out of the building, gasping and waving their hands to clear the air.

“How’s Cecil?”

Carlos glanced back worriedly to where the radio host lay face up on the cold metal grating, drenched so completely in his own blood it was difficult to distinguish clothing from skin. He was moaning quietly, a hand twitching towards the worst gashes on his upper chest.

“I don’t know,” Carlos said, his voice tight, and he hated that his words were true. “Whatever Diego did to him—it’s not—he’s not doing too well.” He bit back further explanation; no need to make Dana worry any more than she already was. _We’ll see if he still loves you when he wakes._

“Were any of the secret policemen injured?”

It took Carlos a few seconds to process her words, and then he shook his head. _Focus, Carlos. Focus._ Behind him, Cecil let out a pained whimper and Carlos had to dig his fingernails into the back of his hand to keep his attention on Dana. “Secret policemen, yes—um, just a bit of oxygen deprivation, I think. They should be fine in a couple of minutes.”

Dana must have heard Cecil too, or else picked up on the distress in Carlos’ voice, because she dropped her hand to the gear shift. “All right then, express van to Night Vale General Hospital, tickets for two. I’ll radio over to let the secret policemen know where we’ve gone.”

Carlos nodded distractedly and glanced back at Cecil. The radio host’s head was turning from side to side on the hard metal grating, and he was shaking. Carlos forced himself to look back at Dana, his eyes pausing halfway on his own lab coat, which was so soaked with Cecil’s blood it was dripping onto the floor, making dark little splotches on the grating. “Make it quick.”

Carlos closed the divider and clung to one of the overhead bars as Dana put the truck in gear and slammed on the accelerator.

Moving hand over hand, Carlos quickly pulled himself over to where Cecil was stirring on the ground, swaying with the movement of the van.

He collapsed to his knees beside Cecil as the radio host’s eyelids flickered open and closed again, one of his hands moving lightly over the surface of his bloodied chest, smearing the fresh blood welling up there.

Carlos carefully slid his legs under Cecil’s head so he was lying partially in the scientist’s lap, hoping to provide more of a pillow than the hard metal grating. He brushed back a few strands of his boyfriend’s hair, trying to ignore how they tangled with each other where they were crusted with dried blood.

“Cecil? Cecil, it’s Carlos,” he said softly, running a hand down the other man’s face, tracing the marks of his tears with his fingertips. “You’re safe now.”

Cecil stirred further under Carlos’ touch, and Carlos held his breath as the radio host’s eyes slowly flickered open again. This time they stayed open, looking blearily up at the scientist. One eye was bloodshot, but both irises were as dazzlingly purple as Carlos remembered. They slowly slid into focus on Carlos’ face, and Carlos smiled shyly. “Hey.”

Cecil’s eyes blinked twice and widened. At first Carlos thought he was just surprised, but then Cecil pulled himself off the scientist’s lap and began scrabbling away from him across the metal grating.

Carlos sat in shock as Cecil crawled desperately away, pulling himself along by bruised elbows and blood-stained hands.

“Cecil!” Carlos started uncertainly after him as he made his way towards the doors of the van, swaying slightly with the movement of the vehicle. “Cecil, it’s okay!” Carlos suddenly realized what the problem was: he and Diego looked identical, after all, and Cecil probably thought he was his double. “It’s Carlos, it’s Carlos, Cecil, it’s me!”

To his horror, Cecil turned and launched himself bodily at the door of the van, hands scrambling at the latch, trying to figure out how it worked. Carlos pushed himself to his feet just as Cecil lifted the latch. At the same time, Dana swerved dangerously fast around a corner.

Carlos staggered and was slammed hard into the wall of the van, and by the time he had refocused on the doors of the van, one was open and Cecil was gone.

“Cecil!” he screamed, running to the back of the van. He clung to the door still closed and stuck his head out, terrified of what he might see. The light from the van spilled out into the night, illuminating the open door and the figure clinging to it in pale yellow. As the door lurched back and forth viciously in the wind, Carlos made out Cecil, clutching desperately to the latch mechanism on the door, his feet trying to find purchase on the bottom edge, the ground rushing by at sixty miles per hour beneath him.

“Take my hand!” Carlos shouted, throwing an arm out. Cecil’s eyes caught his and widened even further, and a look of absolute terror filled his face.

Carlos reached out further, trying to cover more of the distance between them, but Cecil looked away. The radio host’s eyes fell on the ground rushing by beneath him, and stayed there for a long couple of seconds. Then he looked back up at Carlos and his still-extended arm, and a strange, almost peaceful look came over his features as he gazed calmly into Carlos’ terrified eyes, and Carlos knew with a sudden, chilling certainty what Cecil was going to do a heartbeat before he did it.

Cecil let go.

“Oh, no you don’t!” Carlos grabbed the edge of the still-closed door and threw himself out after Cecil, keeping one foot planted on the van’s bumper to act as a pivot. His free hand hit something he thought might be Cecil and closed like a vice. Carlos was abruptly yanked backward as he became fully extended and his arm clutching the door shrieked in pain. The jolt was jarring, and for one awful moment Carlos was sure he’d dislocated his shoulder. Then there was a shriek from Cecil and the sound of something skipping along pavement at sixty miles per hour. Carlos’s head snapped around to see that he had grabbed Cecil by the forearm, and was effectively dragging him down the road after the van, his heels jumping along the pavement.

With a sudden, inhuman burst of strength Carlos hadn’t known his entirely unathletic muscles were capable of, he leaned back and started pulling himself back in towards the van with just the one hand, hauling Cecil after him with the other. Carlos’ head passed the closed van door and he moved his foot back to take an unsteady step into the van, moving his other hand from the closed door to Cecil’s forearm.

Blocking out Cecil’s strangled screams as the radio host thrashed under his hands, trying to free himself, Carlos took another step backwards, dragging Cecil bodily into the van even as Cecil’s spasms knocked him hard into the bumper and the wavering still-open door.

With a final grunt, Carlos leaned back as far as he could and pulled Cecil the rest of the way into the van.

He released Cecil’s arm as soon as his feet cleared the opening and dove for the van doors, narrowly avoiding being thrown out himself. He quickly leaned out and pulled the errant door closed and latched it.

“What. The. Hell.” Carlos whipped around, hands clenching. He was shaking violently, though whether from exertion or terror or anger he wasn’t sure; he just knew he could feel the adrenaline pumping through his veins like liquid fire.

At the sight of Cecil trying feebly to push himself away from Carlos’ anger with just his elbows, he immediately regretted his strong words. Cecil’s chest was soaked in fresh blood, and his face had blanched to a deathly white. He, too, was shaking, even as he tried desperately to drag himself as far away from Carlos as possible in the cramped van. Tears were streaking down his blood-stained face, and he looked to be in so much pain that Carlos felt his anger melt away in a sudden surge of guilt.

“Oh, Cecil,” he whispered, feeling horrible. He took a couple shaky steps towards the radio host, which just made him try to scramble away faster.

“No, no, no, _please_ , just no. Just let me _die_ , _please_. I—” Cecil’s voice, usually so smooth and perfect, was unnaturally high and scratchy, and he broke off with a strangled sob.

“It’s okay, Cecil; it’s Carlos,” Carlos said, dropping to his knees and reaching out towards his boyfriend. “Not Diego. Carlos. From Night Vale.”

This just made Cecil burst into fresh tears, and when Carlos’ fingers brushed his shoulder, he flinched away violently. Carlos immediately pulled his hand back.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Cecil.” There were sharp pangs spearing through Carlos’ chest. “It’s Carlos. _Carlos_. The scientist, remember?” He tried for a lopsided grin but it came out strained and tight.

“Please, _please_ , just not again, not again, I can’t take it anymore…” Cecil ran into the edge of the van and tried to keep going. His breaths were quick and tight, and he was soon gasping desperately for each short breath. Against his better judgment, Carlos crept after him; he could see that Cecil didn’t want him near but couldn’t understand it. He just wanted to hold Cecil, to get him to understand that he was rescued, and to tell him that Carlos wasn’t going to let anything bad ever happen to him again; he just wanted it so damn _much_.

“No, no, not again, please, no,” Cecil gasped, still trying to back further into the wall. Every desperate plea drove more stakes into Carlos’ heart, but Carlos couldn’t stop himself from advancing; he kept thinking that if he could just hold Cecil, he could somehow make it all better.

“Please, please, no…Carlos…” All of a sudden, Cecil blanched even further and his hands stopped trying to push him farther away. His eyes rolled back into his head and Carlos lunged forward and grabbed him by the shoulders before he could hit the floor.

Carlos wasted no time in tearing off his lab coat and bunching it into a pillow. He stuffed it under Cecil’s head as he gently laid him down, arranging his boyfriend’s cramped limbs into a more comfortable position.

_We’ll see if he still loves you when he wakes._

Carlos swallowed down panic even as his eyes slid over to Cecil’s chest, where the radio host’s mangled dress shirt was freshly soaked all the way through with bright red blood. The recent scuffle must have torn apart some of the scabs because he was bleeding heavily, his chest rising and falling in quick, broken, painful-looking bursts. Carlos started quickly unbuttoning what remained of Cecil’s shirt, his fingers soon growing slick with blood. He tried to detach himself and steady his shaking fingers—he was a scientist, after all—but had little success.

Carlos reached the last button and carefully peeled Cecil’s shirt open, wincing as it caught on the dried scabs. Finally Cecil’s bare chest was exposed, and Carlos felt all the blood in his own body stop moving.

What he had initially taken to be a series of unrelated crisscrossing wounds was in fact far more premeditated.

Gouged across Cecil’s chest in vicious, meticulous gashes, in horribly precise letters half an inch deep and a foot tall, was the word CARLOS.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What has Diego done to Cecil? Why is Cecil still alive after two weeks? And why did Diego let them live? Find out...next time. *dum dum dummmm*
> 
> Geoffrey is the name of a SSP officer in several fics by spiderwolves. He was never anything more than a name, but I liked his name, so I pilfered it and spun him out into a more complete character.
> 
> And if you're *very* into science (like me), you'll notice that Diego's lab was booby-trapped with a solid (animals), a liquid (acid), a gas (carbon monoxide), and a plasma (electricity).


	4. Home Is Where My Broken Heart Is

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's where the implied sexual abuse comes in. It's just a few lines, but...you know.

At Night Vale General Hospital, Cecil was immediately taken into the ER for stitches whose number Carlos felt sure would be in the hundreds.

Carlos was left outside in the lobby, loosely holding onto his bundled-up, blood-stained lab coat, and feeling very lost.

By the time the van had finally pulled up outside the hospital, Cecil’s bleeding hadn’t slowed down and he hadn’t regained consciousness either. Carlos had wrapped his torso in some bandages he’d found under one of the benches along the interior of the van, but red stains kept bleeding through the layers of fabric.

When the hospital staff had pulled Cecil away onto a gurney, a gleaming red smear remained on the floor of the van, dripping through the grating. Cecil’s pulse had been threadier than ever when Carlos’ hands finally left him, and not all the dried tears on the radio host’s face were his own.

Carlos was caught between a state of delayed shock and full-blown panic, and he only distantly recalled threatening one of the hospital staff with the slowest death known to science if Cecil didn’t make it.

Some doctor had wanted to look Carlos over as well, but he had shaken him off right away; if there were spare doctors around to look at him, they could go help save Cecil.

Now Carlos sat in one the too-clean hospital chairs, forearms resting on his knees, shoulders hunched, turning the red-stained bundle of his lab coat over and over in his hands.

What had Diego _done_ to Cecil? He felt reasonably certain he had made clear to Cecil that he was Carlos, not his double, but that hadn’t seemed to make a difference. And then there was that awful, damning word gouged into his lover’s chest…it made Carlos want to hurl just thinking about it. Diego was one sick, sadistic bastard—of that Carlos was chillingly certain. If Dana hadn’t already killed him, Carlos would have done it himself.

Because whatever Diego had done was so unspeakably horrible that Cecil— _Cecil_ —would rather kill himself than go back. Carlos was angry—viciously, violently angry at whoever had done this—but he found himself in the frustrating position of his revenge having already been taken by someone else.

So he sat and stared and turned his lab coat over and over in his hands, because he could think of nothing else he could do.

After an infinite amount of time, he registered that someone was sitting next to him; he sniffed and looked over, blinking to shed the tears blurring his vision.

Geoffrey sadly returned his gaze, and though there were sorrow and worry in his eyes, there was also a steadiness, a rock-hard calmness that seemed to permeate his whole being.

Carlos sniffed again and looked away. He stopped turning the lab coat over in his hands, but then they started to shake instead. Beside him, Geoffrey was a rock, a solid, calm presence that could feel his pain but bear it too.

Carlos took an impossibly shaky breath and sat back, putting his lab coat on his lap and digging his hands into the sides of his thighs to keep them from shaking. “How do you do it?” he asked at last.

“Do what?” Geoffrey asked, and it occurred to Carlos that he had never properly had a conversation with the man, and another tear slipped down his cheek, this one for opportunities not taken, for people he’d been too busy to know.

“Live here. Live with…it.” Carlos gestured feebly at the hospital. He did not know how to articulate what he wanted to say.

“Death, you mean? Night Vale?”

Carlos forced himself to nod, staring at the opposite wall as the secret policeman answered.

“Just the same as we deal with everything else, I suppose,” Geoffrey said after a moment. “You never know what’s coming next in this town, what will be banned one day, or the next—no more pens today, no more wheat tomorrow. You take what you can get when you can get it, and don’t bother worrying about when you can’t.”

Carlos continued staring at the wall, processing.

He heard Geoffrey sigh from beside him. “Nothing here is permanent, Carlos. Not a single thing. You can only hope you can appreciate its impermanence for the longest time you can.”

Carlos nodded and dropped his gaze back down to his blood-stained lab coat. _Appreciate its impermanence_ —it was something Cecil would have said. He opened his mouth to say something, to thank Geoffrey for coming, for caring, for talking to him—but just then a nurse came up to him.

“Carlos, you can see him now,” she said, and he didn’t even bother to wonder how she knew his name. Ever since Cecil had first spoken it, everyone in Night Vale knew it by heart.

Carlos sniffed ineffectually and dabbed at his eyes with his sleeve, but didn’t bother to try too hard. He knew as soon as he saw Cecil he’d start all over again.

As predicted, at the first sight of Cecil lying all wrapped up on the hospital bed with enough white bandages to make him look more dead than alive, he felt fresh, hot tears streaking down his cheeks.

Carlos dropped shakily into the chair by the bed, gripping the edges of the seat to try and stop his hands from trembling. His gaze fell first on Cecil’s pale face and closed eyes. The blood and tears from earlier had been scrubbed off, though he still needed a shave. Butterfly bandages dotted the side of his face, along with a couple rows of delicate stitches Carlos knew Cecil would hate viciously when it came time to take them out. His arms and shoulders were mostly wrapped in bandages as well, and the sheets covered the rest of him, though there was a distinct bulge over his upper chest.

Carlos reached out carefully and took Cecil by the hand. He rubbed his thumb in small circles along the back of the radio host’s hand, noticing dimly that the parts of Cecil’s forearms visible around his bandages were smooth and pale, completely devoid of his usual happy array of sentient tattoos.

Despite the thick bandages, now that Cecil was cleaned up he looked much better than he had in Diego’s lab. He was still pale and gaunt, but there were fewer cuts than he remembered, and, judging by how many had stitches, they weren’t as deep as he had first feared.

It eventually registered that the nurse was talking to him, saying something about no broken bones or major internal bleeding, mostly just lacerations, cuts, and puncture wounds, almost purposeful in their non-fatality. Carlos listened with half an ear until she reached the part about keeping Cecil in the hospital for a week or so.

Carlos’ head snapped around. “Why can’t I take him home?”

The nurse shifted uneasily. “We don’t want him to get…overexcited. Or too active. Those stitches will pull out very easily, and he needs to stay in bed. Any further blood loss could severely weaken him.”

_We know it’s you, Carlos,_ translated a vicious voice in Carlos’ head. _We saw the letters carved into his chest like he was a piece of wax. We don’t want to let him go with you. You’ll do this all over again. If you take him home, you’ll kill him. We don’t trust you with our radio host, outsider. Go back to the desert otherworld where you belong._

Carlos looked away. He knew she was right, but he didn’t necessarily trust the hospital either. It was, after all, _Night Vale_ General Hospital, and though their ER might be top-notch, he’d done some research a while back and knew for a fact that some of the long-terms effects of staying in the hospital for more than three days included sprouting and losing limbs, being eaten by giant snakes, contracting alien diseases, and switching native languages.

Maybe all of Night Vale wanted to burn him at the stake for doing this to Cecil, and he might well let them, but first he wanted Cecil to recover, and that wasn’t going to happen here.

In the end, Carlos agreed to let Cecil stay for two more nights, after which Carlos would move him to their house. Because Carlos was probably the closest thing Cecil had to family after his sister and niece (Steve Carlsberg was definitely _nowhere_ on that list), the doctors reluctantly agreed. Carlos also might have threatened them with divine retribution he had no authority to declare; his memory was a little fuzzy on the topic.

 

~~~~****~~~~

 

Two days later, Cecil still hadn’t regained consciousness. Some of his sleep had been drug-induced by the hospital staff to try and keep him from waking up and moving around too much, but some of it wasn’t. No matter if he was on the drugs or not, Cecil never showed any signs of waking.

Carlos arrived promptly at eight o’clock on the morning he was to pick Cecil up. Against further protests by the doctors and screeching receptionist, he ordered Cecil pulled off all the equipment and transferred to his car.

The doctors gave him several bottles of pain medication and something that he thought was supposed to be antibiotics but looked more like moldy peas. He was given strict instructions to keep Cecil in bed and not let him move around too much and pull the stitches.

At this point a greenish fog started rising up around a nearby nurse, and Carlos quickly retreated to his car, double-checking that Cecil was safely and comfortably arranged lying down in the backseat first.

After the short drive to their house, Carlos carefully pulled Cecil into his arms and carried him inside and upstairs to their bedroom. He pulled back the covers on the wide bed, settled Cecil in the very center, and began carefully tucking him in.

It bothered him immensely how light Cecil was, and how clearly visible every rib was under his battered skin. He doubted Diego had bothered feeding Cecil anything at all.

There were fresher, ugly bruises spanning across Cecil’s shoulders, torso, and hips as well, from banging into the bumper of the secret police van; those, at the very least, were directly Carlos’ fault.

It was when he briefly rolled Cecil onto his side to tug some blankets out from under his leg that he finally found Cecil’s tattoos, bunched into a tight purple knot in the small of his back.

Carlos pulled himself up and into a sitting position on the bed and reached out a gentle finger to carefully stroke the tattoos. He cooed gently, trying to coax the tiny inked creatures out of their tight, terrified knot.

Slowly, one by one, he managed to untangle them, though they kept trying to bunch back together again. Carlos placed his hand flat against Cecil’s back and kept it there until a couple tattoos crept forward to nibble gently on the edge of his fingers, a sort of curious sniff to figure out who he was.

Then the leading one, a small, fluid purple tattoo currently in the shape of an adorable paisley swirl, skittered gleefully off Cecil’s back and up onto Carlos’ hand and forearm.

It swirled happily around Carlos’ elbow and then darted back down to Cecil’s back, where it bounced around the other tattoos and then back onto Carlos’ hand.

The scientist watched, delighted, as the rest of the tattoos followed the first, swirling around his arm and then up to his collar, where he felt a slight but not unpleasant fuzz along his clavicles.

He didn’t realize until just then how incredibly relieved he was that Cecil’s tattoos still liked him. If they, too, had been terrified of him—Carlos didn’t like to think so, but the truth was that it might have broken him completely.

After a couple minutes of coaxing each tattoo onto the back of his hand in turn so he could stroke them all individually, the tattoos began to grow bored and clustered on his palm and fingertips. Carlos felt a sudden pang of regret at their wanting to leave so soon, but complied by resting his hand again on Cecil’s back. The tattoos streamed off his hand and began cautiously advancing across the curve of Cecil’s back, darting forward to brush the bandages before pulling back and then approaching them again, more slowly, a second time.

Smiling in what seemed like the first time in forever, Carlos gently rolled Cecil onto his back and pulled the covers up to his chin. He stroked back Cecil’s hair and smoothed down the butterfly bandages. As an afterthought, he grabbed a pad of paper and a handmade not-pen from the nightstand and scribbled a short message: ‘Hope you’re feeling better. Don’t move around too much. I’ll be downstairs. –Carlos XO.’

He left the pad in plain view on the middle of the nightstand and drew the shades. He left his lab coat in a pile by the door and a parting kiss on Cecil’s forehead, turned the lights off, pulled the door half closed, and headed downstairs to lay out some ingredients for soup for when Cecil woke up.

The radio host, as it turned out, slept the whole day away, and Carlos couldn’t bring himself to wake him up.

Carlos wanted so desperately to curl up beside Cecil and hold him through the night, for his sake as much as the radio host’s, but he remembered all too well Diego’s parting words and Cecil’s mindless terror in the van.

It was better, he supposed, to let Cecil sleep some of it off and then come to his senses on his own. He’d wake up in his own bed in his own house, and that, Carlos felt, should reassure him that he was, in fact, the real Carlos.

So he made sure there was a full glass of water on the nightstand and headed downstairs to sleep on the couch, practically a stranger in his own home.

 

~~~~****~~~~

 

Carlos wasn’t sure what woke him. It might have been some small sound; alternatively, it might have been a car driving past and shining their lights through the living room window.

He lay quietly, staring out the broad window at the dimmed streetlights of Night Vale. At least he was free of the desert otherworld, he reflected. At least he was with Cecil—he couldn’t let himself forget that. They’d work through this; he just had to set Cecil straight as to what was happening and then they’d have the reunion he’d been hoping for, the one he’d been thinking about for weeks, distracting him while he tried to work on science…

Carlos was staring through the glass of the window, watching the reassuring calmness of the city at night, when a sudden reflection danced across the window.

It was pale and vaguely person-shaped, and at first Carlos thought he was seeing ghosts, or perhaps for the first time the Faceless Old Woman who secretly lived in his home, but then he saw that the paleness was the white of bandages, and the vertical streak in the center was light reflecting off a blade…

Carlos threw himself off the couch just as a strangled scream burst from behind him and there was the muffled sound of something hitting the upholstery.

Carlos scrambled ungracefully to his feet and dove for the light switch near the front door. He squeezed his eyes shut and hit the switch.

There was another cry, this one surprised, and Carlos slowly cracked his eyes open, letting them adjust to the light incrementally.

And there, standing behind the couch, holding the knife from Carlos’ lab coat pocket in one hand and shielding his eyes from the sudden brightness with the other, was Cecil.

“Cecil!”

The radio host quickly lowered his arm, squinting. Carlos looked him over quickly while he was still distracted, assessing him for damages. He was relieved to see that his bandages were still a pristine white, so he must not have pulled any of his stitches yet.

“Cecil, it’s me; it’s Carlos.” Carlos took a couple hesitant steps forward, trying to carefully gauge his boyfriend’s reaction. “Drop the knife, honey.”

Somewhat to his surprise, Cecil did drop the knife—let it slip through his fingers onto the couch, falling beside a gash Carlos was certain hadn’t been there when he’d gone to sleep. Carlos’ gaze lingered on the stuffing visible through the gash and then looked back up at Cecil, who looked like the kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

Carlos raised his hands open and in front of him to show he meant no harm. At this careful movement, though, Cecil’s whole face changed, crumpling in on itself as though Carlos had slapped him.

Carlos took a slow step towards the radio host. “Cecil, honey, it’s Carlos. The scientist. Not Diego. We rescued you, remember? You’re safe now; you’re home.” He gestured at the room with one hand.

Cecil must have heard him, but his words seemed to have the exact opposite effect Carlos intended. He took a wobbly step backwards even as Carlos took a careful one forward.

Carlos forced himself to stop and give Cecil some space. He tried to ignore the terror in his boyfriend’s eyes. “Listen; you’ve got about a million stitches, so be careful, okay? Take it easy. I just want to help.”

At that, Cecil’s eyes widened, and he shook his head mutely. He was staring at Carlos; his eyes hadn’t left him this whole time.

“Okay, let’s start small,” Carlos said, swallowing down the acid bile in his own throat. “You’re Cecil Palmer, radio host for Night Vale Community Radio. Yes?”

Cecil nodded shakily, and his mouth cracked open. “Please don’t hurt me.” His voice was incredibly small.

Carlos felt his stomach clench. “I’m not going to hurt you, Cecil. I could never hurt you.”

But Cecil was shaking his head, and backing further away.

New topic, then. “All right,” Carlos said, trying to keep his voice level. “How about me? Do you remember me?”

Cecil nodded hastily, though the fear burning in his eyes negated any reassurance the affirmative gave him.

“Who do you…think I am?” Carlos asked at length. He was a scientist; he just had to break this down piece by piece. Small steps.

“Carlos,” whispered Cecil.

“Carlos the scientist?” Carlos prompted.

“Carlos the scientist,” Cecil corrected quickly, though the look of dismay on his face said that he was horrified to have not given the correct answer the first time.

“No, I mean, I’m a scientist. It’s my job. Carlos the scientist, that’s what you called me.”

Cecil shook his head and took another step back.

A terrible thought occurred to Carlos. “Cecil, do you remember me at all?” He saw Cecil’s hasty nod and rephrased his thought. “I mean, do you remember me from _before_ you were kidnapped?”

He watched Cecil thinking, staring through him at something just beyond his reach.

“Dating?” Carlos suggested. “Sitting under the lights above the Arby’s? Me getting a haircut? Moving in together, the old oak doors, the House that Doesn’t Exist— _anything?_ ”

Cecil stared at him, swallowed nervously, and then slowly shook his head no.

Carlos felt the whole world drop out from under him, spinning away at a thousand miles per hour and leaving him stranded all alone in the cold void.

He realized too late that he had dropped his hands, and the gesture had spooked Cecil.

When the horrified haze finally left Carlos’ vision, he saw that Cecil had backed all the way up to the far wall, his palms pressed flat against it at his sides.

“But I can!” Cecil said quickly as he saw Carlos focus back on him. “I can! I can remember, I’ll remember those things if you want—! The Arby’s, lights, sure! Just—just please, please, no more…”

Carlos felt himself walking forward. He just had to _show_ Cecil…he couldn’t have forgotten it _all_ , not completely, not forever…

Cecil’s legs gave out from under him as Carlos advanced, and he slid wretchedly to the floor. The tears were coming now, streaking down his face in terrified waves as he scooted back along the wall and away from Carlos, stopping only when he ran into the corner. Carlos followed him patiently.

“Please, please, no, no, gods, no!” Cecil was trembling as he pulled his knees up to his chest and buried his face in them, trying to make himself as small as possible.

Carlos dropped to his knees beside his boyfriend and wrapped his arms around his quivering shoulders, pulling Cecil closer.

Unsurprisingly, Cecil tried to shrink even further into himself, flinching away from the contact.

An absurd thought flittered across Carlos’ mind and he pulled back slightly and carefully lifted Cecil’s face, one hand on either cheek. At first the radio host tried to resist, but then his strength seemed to melt away, and he let Carlos tilt his head back.

Carlos leaned in and, very carefully and deliberately, kissed him.

Cecil tasted exactly as wonderful as Carlos remembered, but though he kept the contact for several long seconds, Cecil remained passive and unresponsive.

Finally Carlos pulled back. Cecil’s eyes were blank and unfocused, and he’d stopped shaking.

“Cecil?”

The radio host didn’t indicate he heard Carlos, and when he gently swayed his shoulder, there was no indication that Cecil even recognized his existence. He just sat there and let Carlos do it.

A sudden horrible feeling washed over Carlos as a word came to his mind that perfectly described Cecil: _pliant_. It was a word he had hoped never to apply to his boyfriend, and it made him shudder with horror and self-disgust. With a tremor, he wondered for the first time just how far Diego had gone.

Cecil’s eyes were flat and detached, their shimmering purple irises blank, and Carlos realized that Cecil had withdrawn into himself completely, locking himself out of his own body. Carlos knew that it was a reaction to extreme fear, and he swallowed thickly as he wondered again what had happened to Cecil that he had learned that reaction.

Whatever the case, Cecil didn’t look like he’d be coming around for a while, so Carlos gently picked him up and carried him back upstairs. He tried to ignore the way Cecil lay limply in his arms, his eyes open but unseeing.

Carlos tucked him carefully into the bed, pulling the warm blankets up around his narrow shoulders. Carlos’ insides were a writhing knot of worry and fear and guilt, and he felt sick to his stomach, but the least he could do was make Cecil comfortable now.

Once he was done tucking Cecil in, he stepped back forcibly, refusing to allow himself to remain in Cecil’s company. He had sent Cecil into this broken, absent state, and he was not about to give himself a chance to make it worse.

His gaze drifted instead to the note he had left on the night stand, his eyes lingering on the ‘Carlos XO.’ Seized by a sudden irrational surge of anger, he grabbed the note, crumpled it violently into a misshapen ball, and hurled it viciously in the direction of the trash can. It missed by several feet, and Carlos stormed angrily over to it, grabbed it again, and slammed it down towards the can. This time it bounced off the rim, and Carlos could have cried with frustration as he grabbed it and drove it bodily into the trash can. He kicked the can hard, and then swore angrily as a sharp pain lanced up his leg.

He yanked the door to the bedroom open and stormed down the steps, but by the time he had reached the bottom, all his anger had drained away and he felt only a gaping emptiness in its place.

There was a figure standing in the middle of the living room, and as Carlos came closer it resolved itself into Geoffrey, outfitted in his usual black leather uniform. He must have overheard everything.

And suddenly it was all just too much. With barely a nod to the secret policeman, Carlos dropped onto the couch beside Cecil’s knife and the hole it had made, buried his head in his hands, and burst into tears.

After a few moments Geoffrey set a box of tissues and a trash can nearby, and Carlos made good use of them.

After a solid ten minutes of broken sobbing, Carlos sniffed thickly and looked blearily up at Geoffrey, still standing patiently nearby, waiting for Carlos to finish.

“It’s just…” Carlos began, his voice scratchy and strangled from crying. He had a sudden irrational desire to explain himself to someone, to justify his emotions, and Geoffrey was nearby and (presumably) sympathetic. “I came back from the desert otherworld, right? I found an old oak door and I went through it and then it was supposed to be perfect, you know? But then he wasn’t here, but I said to myself that I’d just have to rescue him and _then_ it’d be perfect. But then he was unconscious, oh, and they’d done these terrible things to him—” Carlos paused to noisily blow his nose and gasp for air, feeling his throat closing with each hitching breath. “And then I thought it’d be better when he woke up, except now they’ve done something _else_ to him and I just don’t know if I can keep going on like this, thinking it’ll be fine when it never is…and I don’t know if he’s ever going to get better from this one— _God_ , he doesn’t even remember me, Geoffrey! Not a clue. Doesn’t remember a single blasted thing. But, I just—I just want—I just love him so damn _much_ …” Carlos dissolved into fresh tears and buried his face in his hands again. It felt like he was being torn in half.

For a long moment the only sound was Carlos’ heaving sobs, and then there was a firm pressure on Carlos’ shoulder. For one bizarre second, Carlos thought it was Cecil, and looked up hopefully though his tear-filled eyes, but it was only Geoffrey.

His eyes were deep and sympathetic, and they suddenly seemed so very old. Carlos found himself wondering how many people Geoffrey had known and lost. There was so much loss in this town, so very, very much, and now Cecil was a part of that.

Hot tears burned at Carlos’ eyes and he buried his head in his hands again. He could literally feel his heart breaking in his chest, and it hurt _so much_. He just wanted it to stop. He didn’t even want to be happy again; happiness was for people who deserved it, for people who didn’t desert their boyfriends. He just wanted to sink into oblivion, to find some way to smother the burning in his soul; he just wanted to never feel anything ever again.

He felt the pressure of Geoffrey’s hand on his shoulder lessen, and was startled when the secret policeman spoke a few minutes later.

“You know, there may be a way to fix him.”

Carlos’s head snapped up and he inhaled so quickly he almost blacked out. Geoffrey was a blurry watercolor version of his usual self, and Carlos wiped hastily at his eyes with the back of his hand. “Wha—what?”

Carlos’ vision sharpened and focused enough for him to see the hesitant expression on the secret policeman’s face.

“It’s not for sure, but I think it might work. It’s never really been tried before—that I know of—but I don’t know why it wouldn’t work.”

“What? What—what is it?” Carlos straightened up and sniffed loudly, blinking rapidly as he shifted forward onto the edge of the couch, trying to look as sober and in control as possible. There was a glimmer of hope burning at his core, and he could barely breathe for fear of extinguishing it.

Geoffrey winced a little at something in his own head, and looked as though he had regretted bringing the topic up in the first place. And then: “Voluntary re-education.”

Carlos stared at him. “Would that…would that work?” he asked at length.

Geoffrey’s face twisted in uncertainty. “If whatever Diego did to him was purely psychological, we ought to be able to overwrite or erase the memories. There could be complications, but, I mean…” Geoffrey scratched the back of his neck awkwardly, his black cape lifting behind him like a shrug. “He doesn’t remember at least some of his time in Night Vale, but that could be simple suppression. We can use re-education to erase or alter memories that contain illegal material, so I don’t see how the principle is any different here, just to erase his memories of Diego.”

Carlos felt his choked breathing slow as he turned this over in his mind. Scientifically, there didn’t seem to be a fault in Geoffrey’s logic—

“But I can’t guarantee anything,” Geoffrey said quickly. “It could—well, it could actually make it worse, I suppose. And re-education—I mean, you’ve seen him after re-education before—it’s not a walk in the park. If we push him too hard, or if the memories refuse to be overwritten or erased…Carlos, it could kill him.”

Carlos’ eyes dropped to the floor, watching his vision blur as fresh tears welled up unbidden.

After a long moment Geoffrey prompted, “Carlos?”

“I know, I know. God, Geoffrey, I know.” Carlos sat back, wiping angrily at his eyes even though the back of his hand was as wet as his cheeks now. “I don’t know…” He remembered Cecil’s re-education sessions all too well, remembered the shaky legs and hollowed eyes he’d tried to hide from Carlos.

“I’ll let you think about it,” Geoffrey said at length. “You know where to find me.”

Carlos dropped his head back into his hands, and when he raised it a couple tear-soaked minutes later, the secret policeman was gone. Carlos’ choked “Thank you,” echoed hollowly in his solitude.

He didn’t want to scare Cecil by having him wake up with Carlos nearby, but he couldn’t bear the terrible aloneness of the living room a moment longer. He swallowed down more of his tears and, still sniffling and clutching the box of tissues like a lifeline, staggered up the stairs. He let himself into the bedroom and dropped into the armchair by the door, not trusting himself any closer to his boyfriend.

His eyes, sore from crying yet refusing to stop, stared hollowly at Cecil’s motionless form on the bed. He mentally traced every curve of his face and body with his eyes because he wasn’t sure if he would ever be able to again with his hand.

He went through the entire box of tissues and had to get another, and finally hiccupped himself into a tense, broken sleep a couple of hours before dawn, occasionally gasping into consciousness to sob a little more as he felt his entire world fall to pieces around him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The idea of Cecil having sentient tattoos that can switch hosts through contact is not my own. I'm not sure who the idea originally came from, but I've read fics with them by both TheRavensDesk and Totalizzyness, and I'm sure there are more.


	5. An Impossible Decision in Impossible Circumstances

Carlos wasn’t sure what woke him at first, but the sudden chill of goose bumps up his arms soon clued him in.

He sat up tiredly, rubbing his eyes with his hands, which were stiff with dried tears.

He blinked lazily a couple of times and then all of a sudden he was wide awake, and the peace of sleep had left him completely.

Cecil was climbing out the window.

Carlos rocked clumsily to his feet, surprised. The window was open, the chilly dawn air spilling into the room even as Cecil tried to claw his way out onto the narrow strip of roof. Carlos immediately saw that he was having difficulties; he looked like he was shaking, and though he had his upper body out the window, he couldn’t quite pull his knee up to the sill. Cecil’s head spun around as Carlos gained his feet, and the radio host immediately struggled more violently, thrashing back and forth like a fish, trying to worm his way through the window.

Carlos hurried across the room and quickly grabbed Cecil around the waist, avoiding his flailing legs as best as he could.

Cecil squirmed hard and managed to kick Carlos squarely in the abdomen, but Carlos merely leaned back, pulling Cecil back inside with him.

“No, no, no, please,” Cecil gasped, thrusting his elbows out to catch on the outside of the window. “Just let me…let me go, please.”

“Come on, Cecil,” Carlos grunted, pulling harder.

Cecil let out a sharp yelp of pain and Carlos quickly loosened his grip. Immediately Cecil tried to squirm away again, but this time Carlos moved forward and grabbed Cecil by the shoulders, making sure Cecil’s head was ducked as he dragged him back through the window.

He dumped the radio host unceremoniously on the bed. “Stay there,” he directed, and went back to close and latch the window.

He was unsurprised to find Cecil not on the bed when he turned back around. Instead, he was falling off the far edge, evidentially trying to make for the door, but his legs were shaking too badly to hold him up.

“Cecil, Cecil, honey…” Carlos went around the side of the bed, beating him to the door easily and stepping in front of it.

Cecil was sitting pathetically on the floor, looking up at him with that same wide-eyed terror. As Carlos shifted in front of the exit, the fight seemed to drain out of Cecil.

His whole frame slumped and his head dropped back against the soft edge of the bed. Carlos saw the beginnings of tears and quickly squatted down so he was at Cecil’s eye level.

“I don’t…” Cecil began, his voice broken and shadowed with pain. “Why won’t you just let me go? I won’t…I won’t talk to anyone, I swear. I’ll leave, please, you’ll never hear about me again, _please_ , just—haven’t you done enough?”

Carlos reached out gently to put a hand on his arm. Cecil flinched away from his touch but Carlos kept his hand there, just a gentle pressure. Cecil looked up at him, and Carlos carefully searched his eyes, looking for any hint of the Cecil he knew.

“Listen, Cecil, I’m going to ask you a question, and it’s very important that you answer it honestly. Do you understand?”

Cecil nodded quickly, his eyes darting nervously from Carlos’ face to his hand and back again.

Carlos carefully closed down his own face, not letting any of his churning emotions stray into his voice. “Cecil, do you remember me at all?”

Cecil nodded vigorously, and Carlos saw his eyes begin to glaze over in fear.

“No, no, I mean, do you remember me at all from before two weeks ago? At _all?_ ”

Cecil’s eyes met his, terrified and searching, the slightest touch of fever still lurking there. _He’s looking for the right answer,_ Carlos thought suddenly.

Cecil nodded very slowly.

“ _Honestly?_ ” Carlos stressed. “Do you honest-to-goodness remember having even seen me in passing at all before two weeks ago?”

Cecil swallowed nervously and, eyes still locked on Carlos’, slowly shook his head no.

Carlos exhaled sharply, feeling tears brimming up in his own eyes. Cecil looked absolutely terrified, and Carlos carefully removed his hand, running a single finger over Cecil’s arm over and over again, trying very hard not to burst into tears.

“But I can,” Cecil said quickly. “If you want me to. I think I remember—”

Carlos shook his head, and Cecil immediately fell silent.

Finally Carlos took a deep, shaky breath and pulled his arm back all the way.

“Are you in pain?” he asked, trying to move the conversation onto safer ground.

Cecil shook his head, but Carlos could tell he was lying. The pain medications from yesterday had surely worn off by now, and Carlos could see a couple fresh spots of red showing through the bandages. And that wasn’t even looking at the way his left shoulder was tenser than his right, the way his right leg was curled under him, or the chronic shaking that never seemed to fully recede.

“Cecil—”

“Yes,” Cecil said very softly. Carlos gave him a surprised look. “A little—a lot? Enough,” he settled on finally.

Carlos slowly made his way to his feet and then reached over and carefully pulled Cecil to his. The radio host immediately shifted his weight to favor his left side, and Carlos moved to help support him, but Cecil jerked away so violently Carlos felt a physical pang through his heart.

Cecil fell awkwardly onto the bed, trying to place himself where he thought Carlos wanted him. _He’s just playing along,_ Carlos realized suddenly. _He’s just doing what he thinks I want. The moment I turn my back, he’ll be gone._

For a long moment Carlos just watched him, trying to swallow down his emotions. “Stay here,” Carlos instructed once he trusted his voice not to betray him, and then turned to walk towards the door to the hall.

At the door, he stopped and looked back, wondering how far Cecil will have gotten to the window by the time he got back. “Please stay there,” he said softly. He hated having to order Cecil around.

Carlos stepped out into the hall, carefully keeping the bedroom door open. He jogged downstairs to the kitchen to retrieve the pain medication and fill up a glass with water, and then hurried back upstairs. He was relieved to see Cecil still lying in bed upon his return, his fingers playing with the edge of the coverlet.

Carlos sat down on the edge of the bed, setting down the glass of water on the nightstand and carefully counting out pills into his hand for Cecil to take.

He glanced back over at Cecil, and saw that he was crying again.

It broke Carlos’ heart every time Cecil shed a tear, especially when it was a direct result of his presence, and Carlos wasn’t sure how many more times his heart could take it. “Cecil, honey, I’m not going to do anything to you. I’m never going to do anything to you.” He wished that, if Cecil could understand anything, he’d understand that.

But Cecil only shook his head, still staring down at the embroidered edge of the blanket.

Carlos followed his gaze and had a sudden last stroke of hope.

“Do you recognize it?” he asked gently, setting the pills down for the moment. He watched Cecil carefully. It was the bedspread he and Cecil had bought together shortly after moving in, when Cecil had decided their new bedroom needed a “more unifying color theme.” It was sea foam green and embroidered with colorful chevrons, but somehow it had tickled the radio host’s fancy.

Cecil shook his head, but his eyes filled with more tears. He looked up at Carlos, eyes brimming. “But it’s like I do, just, just—almost—” Cecil broke into a strangled sob. “Why can’t I _remember?_ Anything before two weeks ago—it’s all—it’s all just—” Cecil broke down completely, pulling his legs up underneath the blanket and then gasping suddenly in pain.

“Here, here, take these,” Carlos said quickly, offering Cecil a glass of water and the pills. “It’s for the pain.”

Cecil looked up at him, and for a moment he thought he saw something shift behind his eyes, a tiny piece of the Cecil he knew shining through, but then his eyes came together in suspicion, and Carlos realized with a sharp pang that he had only imagined it.

“No, no, I’m fine,” Cecil said, trying to motion the pills away even as he involuntarily doubled up in sudden pain. He looked up at Carlos, terrified guilt spread over his features.

“Give me your hand,” Carlos said patiently, and Cecil stared at him. After a long moment, he carefully uncurled himself little by little and held out his hand.

Carlos dropped the pills carefully into his palm, realizing that somewhere in the last few seconds Cecil had stopped shaking.

Cecil stared down at the pills for an impossibly long time. Then he looked up and met Carlos’ eyes. His were steady and endless and dark. Then Cecil carefully reached over with his other hand and picked up the first pill without looking. He raised his hand to his mouth in slow motion and, never breaking eye contact with Carlos, swallowed it dry. Carlos tried to give him the glass of water, but Cecil ignored it, simply staring straight into his eyes with his own calm, emotionless ones. It was then that Carlos’s confused mind managed to finally put together Cecil’s actions, and he realized with a sudden tremor of horror that Cecil thought the pills were poison. He could only watch in horror as Cecil carefully, deliberately, swallowed every pill Carlos had given him.

When he was done, he lay back down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling, and Carlos knew that all he was doing now was waiting for them to take effect.

Carlos wanted so badly to lean closer, rub his thumb over his cheek, and tell him that it wasn’t poison. He wanted to tell him that he loved him and was going to make this right, and it was all going to be fine, but Cecil just looked so peaceful, lying there waiting for what he thought—and probably hoped—was death.

And somewhere in the back of Carlos’ mind, he knew at that moment what he was going to do next. But he wanted to give Cecil one last chance—needed one last confirmation…

Carlos leaned over Cecil carefully, the radio host shrinking into the pillow as Carlos came into view.

“Cecil, honey, I’m going to tell you a story, and I want you to tell me right away if any of it sounds even a little familiar, okay? Just interrupt me if you think you’ve heard this story before, okay?”

Cecil nodded, though if he thought this sounded odd, he kept it to himself. Carlos leaned back and carefully cleared his throat. “Almost three years ago, a man came into town, and he was a scientist.”

Carlos carefully outlined the entirety of his time in Night Vale and his relationship with Cecil, though he carefully kept the details vague and referred to himself only as “the scientist” and Cecil as “the journalist.” By the end of his story, the scientist had found himself trapped in an alternate dimension, separated from his love.

Cecil hadn’t interrupted him once.

“Cecil, honey, does that sound familiar at all?”

Cecil, who had gotten a little sleepier but had otherwise appeared to be paying attention, shook his head. He seemed less afraid now, Carlos noted dimly, though that might have been because he believed himself safely out of the scientist’s reach in the arms of death.

Carlos could tell the pills would take over soon and knock him out, but he needed desperately to know—needed to be absolutely certain. He leaned over and gently took Cecil by the shoulders.

“Not even a little?”

Cecil looked up at him, and even through the sedatives Carlos could see the sudden alarm flare up in them, alarm caused merely by the gentle pressure of Carlos’ palms on his shoulders.

Cecil shook his head quickly. “Why—?” he began.

“Because you’re that journalist, Cecil,” Carlos said, feeling the warm tears finally slip down his cheeks. “You’re the journalist, Cecil, and I’m the scientist and I’ve been trapped in the desert otherworld but I came back, honey. I came back, Cecil, but you’d been kidnapped by my evil Desert Bluffs double, and I know that sounds crazy but it’s true, Cecil, I swear. I’m Carlos the scientist and I love you, and we’ve been together for two years now, and I’m not the one who did this to you, but I _am_ going to be the one to fix it.”

But Cecil was shaking his head, harder and harder the more Carlos talked, and now the blank, panicked look was coming over Cecil’s eyes again.

“No, no, no, no,” Cecil said, his voice frustrated and his eyes brimming with fresh tears. “It’s not true, it’s not true, that’s what you said, it’s not true, it’s lies, all lies…” Cecil was trembling again, and his voice trailed off into feverish mumblings as his eyes glazed over completely. Carlos saw it happening and hastily took his hands off his boyfriend.

“Cecil?” he asked quickly, trying to blink away his own tears as Cecil’s breathing picked up. That blankly terrified look was back in his eyes, and when Carlos tried to calm him down with soothing sounds he flinched away from his voice, and when he tried to gently reach for him, he tried feebly to shift himself further away.

Carlos finally gave up trying to comfort Cecil, who could clearly not experience any emotion around Carlos other than absolute fear, and turned away. He sat on the edge of the bed and buried his face in his hands, crying and just waiting for Cecil to calm down.

Eventually the only sounds of sobbing were coming from Carlos, and he glanced over blearily to see that the sleeping pills had finally taken effect and Cecil was out for the count.

Carlos carefully stood up, sniffing, and went around the bed, pulling a clean lab coat from the closet as he went. He shrugged into it and then pulled back the covers and carefully gathered Cecil up into his arms. As he pulled him tight and buried his face briefly in Cecil’s hair, it hurt deeply that he could only touch Cecil without him flinching when he was feverishly unconscious.

He pulled Cecil as close to him as he could, never wanting to let him go, yet knowing the full implications of what he was about to do.

Maybe, _maybe_ in the long run he might have been able to work it all out, manage to convince Cecil that he was safe again and that Carlos wasn’t a threat, but he knew they’d never be together again. Not after everything that had happened—sooner or later Cecil would seriously hurt himself trying to get away, or he’d slit Carlos’ throat in his sleep, and after seeing the gouges in Cecil’s chest, Carlos wouldn’t even blame him.

Yet as Carlos carefully carried Cecil down the stairs, each step more damning than the last, he knew deep down that he was doing this for himself. If he had been stronger, he’d have left Cecil as soon as he’d rescued him. He should have let him recuperate at his sister’s or with Dana or one of the others, and left town right away. He should have let Cecil recover peacefully, thinking he was safe and away from Carlos forever. That would have been the selfless thing to do—the right thing to do.

But he just couldn’t do it. He wasn’t as young as he’d once been, and Cecil was the only man in all his years he’d ever truly loved. Even the thought of leaving Night Vale, of leaving Cecil to his lonely nightmare-filled solitude, made his blood run cold. He couldn’t leave Cecil any more than he could tear out his own heart and walk away. And now he was putting Cecil’s life on the line in the hopes of recovering their relationship. He hated himself for it, hated his own selfishness, but Cecil was the only thing he had left, the only thing he had ever really had, and he couldn’t bear to lose him.

And he wasn’t sure he could survive another day of Cecil trying to run away or hide in the furthest corner, couldn’t bear seeing that terrible blank fear in his beautiful eyes whenever Carlos drew close, the violent flinching when Carlos reached to touch him. It was killing Carlos as surely as it was killing Cecil, and though it was selfish of Carlos to put Cecil in danger to save his own soul, he felt deep in his core that he had to do it.

“Geoffrey,” Carlos cried hoarsely as he reached the living room.

He carried Cecil to the front door just as it opened to reveal the secret policeman.

“Let’s do it,” Carlos said quickly, before he lost his nerve. “I’ll do it.”

“Are you sure?” Geoffrey asked, his gaze dropping to where Carlos had pulled Cecil as close to his chest as possible.

“No,” Carlos said, feeling more tears slipping down his slick cheeks. “But I don’t know what else to do.”

Geoffrey nodded tightly, and gestured for him to come outside, where the dawning sun was painting everything orange and peach.

Carlos carried Cecil across the threshold, a backwards mockery of marriage with two broken souls.

“You take Cecil; I’ll meet you at City Hall.”

Carlos nodded shakily and walked over to where he’d left his car in the street the night before. Geoffrey helped him open the back door and then jogged off to catch whatever ride he used.

Carlos tucked Cecil inside carefully, as carefully as he had for the ride from the hospital, making sure he was arranged as comfortably as possible in the cramped backseat. The tears were still running down his face unchecked, and they didn’t stop the whole way to the secret police’s headquarters.


	6. What Happens Beneath City Hall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is mainly re-education...which is not pretty. It's along the lines of torture, so mind the tags if that sort of thing's a trigger for you.

Geoffrey was waiting just outside the back door to City Hall when Carlos pulled up. The scientist got out of the car shakily, looking briefly in the secret policeman’s direction before circling around the car to open the back door.

Carlos was out of view for quite some time, and Geoffrey figured he was saying his good-byes. The scientist emerged a long minute later with Cecil in his arms.

The darker man’s cheeks were completely soaked and slick with tears, and he wasn’t done yet. His arms instinctively tightened around Cecil as Geoffrey took several steps towards them.

The scientist looked absolutely terrified, and in the daylight the dark circles under his eyes were clearly visible.

“Are you sure?” Geoffrey asked him in an undertone; he didn’t look very sure.

But Carlos swallowed and nodded, though Geoffrey could see he was shaking. “He…tried to…window,” Carlos tried to explain, but his voice broke off with a strangled sound and he couldn’t continue. Geoffrey nodded kindly; it was not his job to have people explain themselves to him.

“We’ll take good care of him,” Geoffrey promised, meeting Carlos’ downcast eyes as levelly as he could.

The door to City Hall opened behind him and Geoffrey glanced over his shoulder to see two more secret policemen striding through, half-capes fluttering behind them.

They motioned for Carlos to set Cecil down, and for one brief moment Geoffrey was sure he was going to change his mind after all, but then he carefully tilted one arm down. He let Cecil’s feet touch the ground so he was more or less in a vertical position and kept a tight grip on him with the other so he slumped against the scientist.

The secret policemen—Jason and Indira, he thought—each took an arm and pulled it over their shoulders so Cecil was suspended between them, feet trailing on the ground and head slumped all the way forward. Carlos’ fingers lingered on the radio host’s sleeve for as long as he could. Then he gave a great shuddering gasp and took a forced step back, hands going embarrassedly to his cheeks as the secret policemen took Cecil away.

Carlos’ eyes never left Cecil the whole way to the black iron door.

And when he was gone, he just stood there, looking entirely defeated and suddenly very small.

Geoffrey was torn between going to comfort the scientist and following his fellow secret policemen into City Hall, unsure which would be better.

Then Carlos’ eyes trailed over to him, and it seemed to Geoffrey that he had rarely seen a more hopeless soul. _He thinks Cecil’s going to die_ , Geoffrey realized suddenly. _He brought him here so he could die_.

Geoffrey took a couple quick steps forward and carefully placed a gloved hand on Carlos’ shoulder. Carlos didn’t lean into the touch, but he didn’t pull away either, just stood there as though all the fight had gone out of him.

Geoffrey opened his mouth to offer words of reassurance, to tell him that Cecil was going to be fine and the re-education would work, but nothing came out. He had seen too many deaths, he realized, to be able to reassure others of the persistence of life.

“I’ll call you when we have news,” he finally muttered. He awkwardly patted Carlos’ shoulder a couple times, and then turned to walk back towards City Hall.

At the black iron door, he carefully pricked his finger and pressed it to the center of the sigil burned into the door. As it clicked open, he glanced back over his shoulder. Carlos was standing exactly where he had left him, staring at the back of City Hall as though he could stare right through its warded walls and look at Cecil one more time.

 

~~~~****~~~~

 

Geoffrey descended the dark metal stairs with his usual sense of foreboding. Even though he was a secret policeman and exempted from most municipal fears and dangers, he remembered all too well his survival 101 classes from when he was in Boy Scouts as a kid.

He soon caught up with the sounds of feet on metal, four stepping and two dragging. They were taking Cecil all the way down to the main re-education room, which had the best and most advanced facilities.

Geoffrey fell into step behind them, watching the sway of Cecil’s shoulders, his head hanging down in front of him. When they reached the bottom of the iron steps, Geoffrey moved forward to offer blood to the door and swing it open with the mandatory ominous creak. He pulled it open all the way to make room for Jason, Indira, and the still-unconscious Cecil.

The two secret policemen dropped Cecil carefully into the blood-stained chair in the middle of the large darkened room. Geoffrey watched from a few feet away, making sure all the restraints were properly tightened. Indira rolled Cecil’s head back and carefully strapped it there before peeling back an eyelid.

“He’s been sedated,” Indira said, surprised.

“Really?” Jason leaned over to look as well, and made a surprised “hmm!” noise. “Makes sense. That scientist knows his stuff, huh?”

“I hope he’ll be okay,” Indira said, checking to make sure some wires were properly plugged into the array behind the chair.

“Who? The scientist?”

“Cecil,” Indira clarified, reaching over to snap some alligator clips onto the nearby car battery. The battery sparked and emitted a low, angry hum. Indira adjusted a couple knobs and the hum lowed in intensity. “I like his show.”

“Yeah,” Jason agreed, bringing the large flat-screen TVs down from their swivel mounts on the ceiling so they were positioned in front of Cecil, one to either side.

Geoffrey watched silently, arms folded, visually double-checking all their work.

When it was just down to Jason running to fetch something to combat the sedative, Geoffrey walked to the front of the room, where a long bank of darkened, glossy windows was set into the wall. He pushed open the narrow door beside them and ascended the handful of steps to the slightly elevated viewing platform. As his eyes adjusted to the brighter light inside, he stopped short, surprised.

“Sheriff, sir!” he said quickly, snapping his heels together.

“Geoffrey,” the Sheriff said easily, glancing over at him as the policeman came nearer. “I thought I’d oversee this one myself, if you don’t mind.”

“No, sir, of course not, sir!” Geoffrey said, trying to cover his surprise. He’d cleared all this with the Sheriff beforehand, of course, and he’d been given the go-ahead to have some secret policemen sent with Carlos to recover the radio host in the first place, but Geoffrey hadn’t seen the Sheriff in charge of a re-education session for over ten years. He had better things to occupy his time; this must be a very unusual circumstance.

“I hear you’re going to try and break through the negative conditioning he’s received concerning Night Vale?” the Sheriff asked, leaning against the long panel of controls and gazing out the windows as Jason returned, a syringe in hand.

“Yes,” Geoffrey said quickly. “If we can just erase his memories of the last two weeks—completely, that is—we might be able to, well, “reset” him back to before he was abducted.”

The Sheriff was silent for a long moment, fingers drumming against the control bank as the syringe was pressed into the crook of Cecil’s arm.

“This was all your idea?” he asked at last.

Geoffrey nodded nervously. “Yes sir.”

The Sheriff leaned back and glanced over at him. “Well, it’s good thinking, Geoffrey. Using re-education technology to erase enemy brainwashing as well as keeping our own people in line—outside-the box-thinking; I like that. I’ll see you get a promotion.”

“Oh, _sir!_ ” Geoffrey said, honestly taken aback. “I’m glad you think so, sir!” He fidgeted nervously for a moment as an unpleasant thought occurred to him. “Though, sir, I’d like to remain on duty watching Cecil’s house, if that’s all right with you. Whatever happens.”

The Sheriff didn’t seem surprised by his request, only nodding his head as he turned back to the windows. “Naturally.”

In the chair, Cecil was beginning to show signs of consciousness, his head tilting back and forth in the restraint. Jason and Indira came through the door into the viewing platform, both seeming quite surprised to see the Sheriff.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if we had quite a crowd in here by the time this is over,” the Sheriff noted wryly. “Your assignment’s quite popular, you know, Geoffrey.” He leaned back over the control panel, staring out at Cecil as the radio host’s eyes flickered open hesitantly. “The Voice of Night Vale,” he said quietly. And then suddenly he was all business, flicking several switches on the panel and raising some sliders. Immediately, bright spotlights flared into life in the main room, causing Cecil to recoil and squeeze his eyes shut as they focused on him.

“ _Cecil Gershwin Palmer,_ ” the Sheriff said distinctly, holding down a button as he spoke, his voice echoing in the larger room as it was piped through the loudspeaker.

Cecil flinched away from the sound and slowly cracked his eyes open, squinting around at his surroundings. He tried to lift his arms, and Geoffrey watched his eyes widen as he realized he was bound. He pulled hard against the restraints, but they didn’t budge.

The Sheriff moved a slider up on the console and there was a sharp snap as Cecil suddenly went rigid. Geoffrey could see blue sparks flaring around the car battery behind Cecil as electricity shot through the radio host.

Cecil gave a sharp, pained cry even as the Sheriff moved the slider back down and the sparks died down. Cecil gave a long strangled sob and tried pulling against the restraints again. The Sheriff gave him another brief dose of electricity, keeping the voltage on a moderate setting and making sure the charge was very low.

This time Cecil’s sobs were quieter, and he didn’t struggle anymore.

The Sheriff waited a long moment. “ _Cecil Gershwin Palmer?_ ” he asked calmly, pressing the loudspeaker button again.

“Yeah?” Cecil croaked out this time, his voice broken and leagues away from the usual smooth tones they were all used to hearing on the radio.

“Excellent,” the Sheriff said, pulling his hand away from the loudspeaker button and lacing his fingers together to crack his knuckles. “Now,” he said, gazing down at the full array of buttons, knobs, and sliders before him, each representing a fresh new torture. “I was top of the force at re-education training when I was younger, did you know that?” Geoffrey wasn’t sure who this was directed towards; the Sheriff had a fondness for rhetorical questions. “Let’s see if I’ve still got it.” The Sheriff’s hands dropped to the controls.

 

~~~~****~~~~

 

“ _Night Vale_.”

“Home,” Cecil replied.

It was a simple enough test, Geoffrey knew; to incur this level of memory tampering, there had to be some constant Diego had used, probably a word or short phrase. It was a test of simple word association, and with Cecil properly sedated as he was, there should be little confusion between his mind and his mouth.

“ _Radio_ ,” the Sheriff tried.

“Listeners.”

“ _StrexCorp_.”

Cecil visibly shuddered. “Evil,” he hissed.

The Sheriff raised an eyebrow. “ _StrexCorp_ ,” he repeated.

Cecil shrank back into the chair, casting furtive glances around him. “Enemy.”

“Do you think that’s it?” Geoffrey asked quietly, but the Sheriff shook his head. “I’ve seen brainwashing like this before; the reaction will be much larger.”

“Well, as far as I was able to figure out, he was especially upset whenever Carlos was around; could that be it?”

The Sheriff shrugged. “Might as well give it a shot.”

“ _Carlos._ ” The Sheriff’s voice was smooth and level, making sure the word was totally neutral.

In the chair lit by the blinding spotlights, Cecil suddenly froze. Then he shook his head back and forth as much as the restraints allowed, trying to break free again. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no,” he moaned, his voice steadily rising in pitch. Then, unexpectedly, he burst into tears.

“ _Carlos_ ,” the Sheriff repeated, just to be sure.

Cecil’s thrashing shuddered to a halt and he collapsed backwards into the chair. “Just let me die,” he begged, his voice low and desperate. “Stop playing with me. Just—please. You’ve had your fun. Just— _please_ , just let me _die_.” Cecil’s head dropped back against the headrest and his eyes squeezed shut. “I just want to die.” His voice was very small.

The Sheriff let out a “hmmf!” of surprise and glanced over at Geoffrey, who was staring, horrified, at the radio host.

“Don’t let me forget about that promotion, Geoffrey,” he said.

Geoffrey gave him a weak smile as he turned back, turning a couple knobs and pushing up some sliders. “Now, boys, let’s get some static on those screens!” he started directing the secret policemen even as he pushed up the voltage slider and sent another electric shock through Cecil.

“And get an injection of metyrapone ready.”

Jason was out the door even as Indira starting tapping out controls on a secondary panel, sending directions to the televisions.

Geoffrey stood by uncertainly, waiting to be assigned a task. He couldn’t help but gaze sadly out at Cecil, who was crying again and begging to be killed. He was very grateful Carlos wasn’t there.

 

~~~~****~~~~

 

“ _Carlos_.”

Cecil shivered, shaking and trying to retreat further against his straps. “Please don’t hurt me,” he whimpered, his arms straining against the restraints, trying his hardest to curl up even as he was strapped down. “Please don’t; I’ve done everything you asked, haven’t I?”

“Another dose of metyrapone, Jason.”

Cecil screamed as the Sheriff pushed the voltage slider up.

Geoffrey bit his lip and didn’t say a word.

 

~~~~****~~~~

 

“ _Carlos_.”

Cecil’s whole body went rigid like a bar of iron. His fingers formed into angry claws. “Don’t touch me!” he screamed. “Come here, and I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you! You bastard, Carlos, I’ll kill you, I swear!”

Geoffrey heard the uncomfortable shuffling of the handful of observing secret policemen behind him.

The Sheriff nodded to Jason.

 

~~~~****~~~~

 

“ _Carlos._ ”

“Please, please, I’ll do anything,” Cecil begged, and this time his voice was high and straining, drawing out his words into long imploring syllables. “I’ll do anything you like. Just let me go. I swear I won’t tell a soul, I won’t, Carlos, I swear. Anything you like.”

“Metyrapone,” the Sheriff directed, his voice carefully expressionless.

The terrible thought occurred to Geoffrey that he was watching the breaking of Cecil in reverse.

 

~~~~****~~~~

 

“ _Carlos_.”

This time it was all screaming. Just long, loud, painful screaming that ran Cecil’s voice until it was ragged and scratchy. It must have felt awful, but worse still was whatever had caused him to scream like that in the first place.

An unpleasant shiver went down Geoffrey’s spine and stayed there. He could hear one of the younger policemen taking notes quietly in the background.

The television screens flared bright white at the Sheriff’s cue.

 

~~~~****~~~~

 

“ _Carlos_.”

“Fine. Fine! _Fine!_ ” Cecil’s voice was still hoarse from his earlier screaming, but now his eyes were half-closed and he slumped back in the chair, looking utterly defeated. “You win. You win. You’re Carlos. You’re Car—…” Cecil’s eyes slid closed.

The Sheriff stood motionless for a heartbeat and then quickly jumped the voltage slider up.

Cecil remained motionless even though Geoffrey saw the blue electric sparks behind him on the battery.

“Damn! Frances, Monica—get in there and revive him! Jason—adrenaline!”

Geoffrey moved to follow Monica, but the Sheriff called him back. “Stay here, Geoffrey. I might need you.”

Geoffrey hesitated, and it was with reluctance that he moved back to his original position.

Frances and Monica quickly checked Cecil’s pulse and breathing and both shook their heads. Jason sprinted over to them and injected the adrenaline without hesitation.

Geoffrey kept his eyes on Cecil’s tear-streaked, motionless face and felt his stomach clench. What would he tell Carlos?

“ _Out of the way!_ ” the Sheriff commanded quickly through the loudspeaker and the secret policemen jumped to either side as he slid both the voltage and current sliders up in a sharp spike, the watt dial next to them swerving dangerously high.

Cecil’s body jerked violently this time, but his eyes remained closed.

The Sheriff swore angrily under his breath and pulled the sliders all the way back down as Monica held up a hand and went to administer CPR.

Then she stepped back and the Sheriff sent a third current of electricity through Cecil’s body. Geoffrey watched the watt dial jump higher than he’d ever seen it go before the Sheriff quickly slid the voltage and current sliders all the way back down again.

With a jerk so sudden it made Geoffrey jump in shock, Cecil burst back to life. He took in huge gasping breaths of air even as he broke into violent shivers.

Frances quickly removed the head strap, letting Cecil lean his head forward, gasping and spluttering. Frances put a hand on his back, gave it a couple of short thumps, and then began rubbing soothingly.

Geoffrey glanced over at the Sheriff, who he saw had his head hanging as well, palms pressed flat to the control panel.

“That was close,” someone said quietly from behind Geoffrey, but there were too many people now, each releasing his or her breath in unison, for him to determine the speaker.

 

~~~~****~~~~

 

“ _Carlos_.”

Cecil burst into tears. They streamed down his face as he gasped for breath, his whole body racked by the great, terrible sobs. He was gasping out words, but none of them were coherent enough for anyone on the viewing platform to understand. The more his sobs went on, the more terrible they were to listen to. It wasn’t just crying, or even sobs of self-pity or pain like before; no, this was the sound of a heart truly breaking. Geoffrey found himself wringing his hands and quickly stopped.

The Sheriff carefully brought the voltage slider up an inch, just enough of a shock to force Cecil’s heart-wrenching sobs to a brief halt.

Someone behind Geoffrey was crying quietly.

The television screens blared white as Jason approached from behind with the loaded syringe.

 

~~~~****~~~~

 

“ _Carlos_.”

More crying. This time, though, it was punctuated with abrupt, angry silences, as though Cecil was trying to stop crying but just couldn’t.

“I won’t do it!” Cecil said loudly, firmly. “I won’t! You’re not—you’re _not_ Carlos! You’re a double! You’re not—” Cecil broke off in a loud scream, and Geoffrey glanced over at the Sheriff, but his fingers hadn’t touched the voltage slider yet.

“Metyrapone,” he directed, sounding thoughtful.

 

~~~~****~~~~

 

“ _Carlos_.”

Cecil tried to pull free from the restraints again, but this time there seemed to be a little more fight in him, even though the secret police had been having trouble getting him to keep anything down food-wise in the last couple of days. “You don’t need to do this,” Cecil said, and his voice was deeper now, closer to his regular tones, and infinitely reasonable. “They’ll come for me, you know. Carlos and the others—the _real_ Carlos. Night Vale will not stand for this.” His voice was strong and confident, the certainty there unmistakable.

Geoffrey heard a couple muffled coughs from behind him as the crowd shuffled guiltily.

 

~~~~****~~~~

 

“ _Carlos_.”

“What’s going on?” Cecil was sitting up straighter now despite the splotches of red showing through some of his bandages from his earlier thrashes. Cecil paused, his head tilted to the side in the restraints, as though he were listening. “You’re not Carlos,” he said after a moment, as though questioning it. Then, more forcefully: “You are _not_ Carlos.” Suddenly he flinched away, his eyes darting around shrewdly.

The Sheriff patiently slid the voltage slider up.

 

~~~~****~~~~

 

“ _Carlos_.”

For a long moment Cecil didn’t respond. Then he looked up, and a huge smile burst over his face. “Carlos!” he cried, and it was without a trace of his earlier fear.

Geoffrey let out a huge breath, and heard the shuffling behind him of people preparing to stand up. But Cecil wasn’t done yet.

“Oh, Carlos, you’re back! Wait—what are you—?” Cecil broke off suddenly, and the smile froze on his face, his eyes shadowed in confusion. It was like he wanted to smile, but suddenly could not.

Geoffrey watched the Sheriff motion to Indira to turn the TVs back on.

 

~~~~****~~~~

 

“ _Carlos_.” The Sheriff’s voice was as carefully neutral as ever.

Geoffrey leaned forward slightly, as did those lining the wall behind him. This was it; they’d waited a day since the last test just to be sure, and if the previous ones had worked, then the last two weeks should have been erased from Cecil’s memory. The metyrapone drug served to relax his system enough so they could overlay the memories with white light and sound. Meanwhile, the electricity cleaned out his neural pathways and eradicated any lasting traces of the memories as well as any emotions associated with them. It was a good, solid process, meant to erase whole hours or subjects permanently without damaging unrelated memories. This was an odd case, though—he’d never seen more than five days erased at once, and there was no documented case of re-education being used to combat brainwashing.

Geoffrey kept his eyes trained on Cecil sitting limply in the chair, waiting for his reaction to the scientist’s name.

For a long moment Cecil did nothing at all, and then his eyes fell and he began to cry. His hands clawed pitifully at the restraints and Geoffrey felt his heart fall. It hadn’t worked.

Cecil sobbed again, and then he spoke, his words piercing yet soft, gentle yet distraught: “Carlos: my perfect, sweet scientist Carlos, trapped in the desert otherworld.”

Geoffrey’s eyes snapped up and locked on Cecil, and he saw the Cecil of two weeks ago, weeping for his lost boyfriend and the horrors that might befall him in the strange otherworld.

Geoffrey felt a huge grin break across his face as he heard the entire secret police force behind him break into loud applause. Several people patted his back, and he turned to see the Sheriff offering him his gloved hand. Geoffrey took it, surprised but relieved.

“And that,” the Sheriff said with a genuine smile, “is a job well done.”

After a loud five minutes of congratulatory handshaking and backslapping, the Sheriff whistled to get everyone’s attention.

Cecil was still weeping quietly in the main room, and the Sheriff gestured towards him broadly. “Let’s see our guest out, shall we? How about a couple of you get him cleaned up, and the rest of you—yes, you too, Dennis—get all the equipment cleaned and put away. There’ll be plenty of time to celebrate tonight!” As the police force quickly filed out of the room, still chatting and pointing excitedly at the notes they’d taken and gesturing in the direction of the control panel and Cecil, the Sheriff stepped over to Geoffrey.

“And how about you call Carlos?”

Geoffrey beamed. “It would be my honor.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Metyrapone is a drug that scientists are currently using in tests; it appears to be able to remove the emotional impact of trauma from traumatic events. You can read more about it here: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-05/drug-help-you-forget-bad-memories


	7. The Call

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the super-angsty chapter I was talking about earlier. This is where all the tags about depression and suicidal thoughts come in, so tread carefully.

When Carlos got the call, he was sitting on the couch watching TV. Actually, lying on the couch staring at the TV was a better description. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually watched anything.

He was lying there on his side, feet curled up because the couch was too short, staring blankly at the moving colors on the television screen. He had muted it because he found the sounds irritating, wanted only the visual stimulation it could offer.

He had one of Cecil’s shirts clutched in his hands and pressed to his face, trying desperately to find any last scent of his lover lost within the folds. He’d long since forgone tissues and his eyes were red from crying, tear marks dried on his cheeks and hands. He hadn’t cried much lately—he’d simply run out of tears, wept until he was dry, until the great heaving sobs tore more at his soul and abdomen than his eyes. He’d sobbed until the pain made him want to hurl, but there was nothing left in his stomach either.

At first he’d tried going back to work, returning to the lab to find the door locked and the windows darkened. His key hadn’t worked, and after a couple minutes of trying to peer through the glass, he gave up and got back in his car. He sat there for a long time, just staring back out at the building. And suddenly it all just seemed so incredibly pointless—he didn’t really want to work on science anyway. So he drove home and sat on the couch and stared at the gash in the upholstery instead.

That’s when it had really hit him that Cecil was really gone. The moment that iron door had closed over him, he was dead. Carlos knew how hard re-education always hit Cecil, and knew that there was no way the radio host could get through a more intense session in his current state. And besides that, Cecil no longer _wanted_ to live. He’d begged Carlos to kill him, and finally Carlos had complied.

But he hadn’t even had the guts to kill Cecil quickly, instead subjecting him to a slow death at the hands of one of the most painful of Night Vale’s punishments. Cecil hated Carlos—he had made that perfectly clear—and now Carlos could see why.

Carlos had once said that a scientist was self-reliant, that that was the first thing a scientist was. He’d never heard such a load of crap in his entire life. He’d tried out self-reliance in the desert otherworld, worked hard at it and managed to get by, but that was when he got to talk to Cecil as often as desert otherworld time would allow. Now, the mere thought of being without Cecil forever, just being surrounded by the endless solitude of this huge empty house, his better half missing…it was enough to break him for good.

He sat on the floor of the living room for what must have been hours, crying and wheezing raggedly and wondering where it had all gone wrong. If Cecil were his husband, he eventually realized between broken hiccups, then science was his mistress, and she had destroyed his marriage. He remembered his satchel of specimens from the desert otherworld; saw it lying near the door where he’d left it. Every sample he had collected, every minute he had spent in that damned otherworld for the sake of _science_ had been a stab through Cecil’s heart, a cut along his chest. It was because of science that Cecil was dead, because of science that he had forsaken him.

So he staggered to his feet and snatched up the satchel. He only made it as far as the kitchen before his vision blurred too far and he had to stop. He dropped the satchel unceremoniously onto the counter and pulled out the first sample. He stared at it for a long moment and felt himself overcome by rage. He had killed Cecil because of _this_. He had traded beautiful, perfect Cecil’s life for bits of _sand_ and dead _grass_.

Carlos hurled the specimen at the wall with all of his strength and turned back to satchel. He violently tugged out every last sample, cursing when they caught on the edges of the bag, and smashed every last one. He threw some into the sink and tore others to pieces with his hands, or hurled them to the floor or across the room. He screamed while he did this, screaming and sobbing and hating himself so completely for what he had done. Finally he was through and hurled the satchel against the far wall and sank onto the floor, sobbing. He sat there surrounded by the price of Cecil’s life and cried until he could no longer breathe. It was because of science that he had killed Cecil, and he never wanted to touch the hateful word again.

So he lay on the couch and tried to bury himself under the weight of his guilt, staring at the flickering images on the TV while all he could see was the way Cecil had thrown himself out of the van and how he had scrambled so desperately into the corner of the van afterwards, bleeding and gasping but still trying to get away.

That was when he started to believe what Cecil had said about him. He couldn’t even remember a time when Cecil had loved him, could not comprehend a version of himself worthy of love. He couldn’t tear his mind away from the sight of his own name carved into Cecil’s shaking chest, put there for eternity just to remind Carlos of his crime. _He_ had done this—he saw the truth of it in Cecil’s eyes. Every scratch on Cecil’s beautiful skin was blood on Carlos’ hands, red and hot with the stench of sin, and he was drenched in it. He was a monster, a despicable creature that had broken Cecil so completely and then sent him mercilessly to his death. He deserved the worst punishment the world could offer, and could think of nothing worse than the current weight of pain crushing him and making it hard to breathe. Cecil had done nothing wrong—had never done anything wrong—and Carlos had destroyed him.

Occasionally the doorbell rang, but he never bothered to answer it, even when it was accompanied by the familiar voice of Dana or Old Woman Josie or even Steve Carlsberg. He’d long since given up hoping it was Cecil at the door. He couldn’t fathom why anyone would stop by—they probably wanted to collect on Cecil’s medical bills or the lab’s rent. Probably wanted money. People always wanted money. Or, worse yet—they wanted to scream at him, to beat him until he was raw for killing their radio host. That he deserved, believed it with his entire broken heart, but wasn’t even brave enough to go to his just punishment, couldn’t bear to drag himself to the door and accept his sentence. He was such a coward, a horrible, vicious coward that had killed the only person who had ever, he thought, once maybe loved him.

He slept fitfully, waking up shaking or in cold sweats, terrified. One time he woke up convinced Cecil had returned in the middle of the night, whole and beautiful. Cecil had hugged him and told him that he loved him and that everything was going to be okay. When he’d come to his senses, the realization of its fiction had been so terrible that he didn’t let himself sleep for two nights after that.

Carlos tracked down the lone bottle of wine in the cabinet and drained it one afternoon, hoping to black out more peacefully that night, but was only rewarded with terrible nightmares—in one he was the one digging the blade into Cecil’s soft flesh, tearing each cry and broken sob from him, gloating as he wiped his bloodstained hands on his lab coat and whispering about how it was all for science. Cecil cried so much, begging for release, but Carlos just pressed harder with the knife, carving his own name into Cecil’s chest so the radio host would always remember who had done this, and who was responsible. Carlos didn’t touch a drop of alcohol after that.

Then, one day, he set out a row of pill bottles on the bathroom counter. It was all the pain medication in the house, including the high-threshold ones Cecil had been prescribed. He stared at them for a long time, but, again, was too much of a coward to go through with it just yet. He deserved this pain, deserved every ounce of it, deserved it far too much to let himself out easy.

So he just lay there clutching Cecil’s shirt, this last reminder of Cecil as he was before, and stared blankly at the television.

Even though he’d sworn not to sleep again, he must have fallen into a broken stupor on the couch, because the sudden sharp ringing of his cell phone jerked him back into wakefulness.

The pain of consciousness quickly descended, and he felt it crushing his heart like a fist. The sheer weight of solitude and grief wasted no time in compressing around him like great metal hoops, determined to squeeze him until there was nothing left.

Carlos just lay there, struggling to breathe and not wanting to get up and answer the phone. It was lying on the coffee table not three feet in front of him, but he didn’t want to talk to anyone ever again.

He pushed his forehead harder into the side of the couch and took a deep breath through Cecil’s shirt, but it only made his abdomen ache with want. He buried his face in further and pressed one hand over his exposed ear, trying to block out the ringing.

Eventually it stopped and Carlos moved his hand away from his ear, relieved. Seconds later, his phone buzzed again.

Irritated, Carlos reached over and grabbed it, aiming to throw it across the room until it shut up. Instead, his vision blurred and his thumb must have brushed the “accept call” button, because Geoffrey’s voice filled the room.

“Carlos?...Carlos? You there?”

Carlos groaned and then felt his breathing stop as something cold settled over his heart. The aching within him suddenly intensified, and he realized with a broken shudder that Cecil must have finally died. It had been almost a week; he had suffered for _days_ because of Carlos’ cowardice. He wanted to shoot himself. No, he wanted to go to the bathroom and swallow every last pill.

“Carlos? Come on, Carlos, talk to me.”

Carlos reluctantly pulled the phone closer to his ear. He should thank Geoffrey, before he went.

“Is it over?” Carlos’ voice was scratchy from disuse, and sounded harsh and alien even to his own ears. He’d never understood how Cecil once thought it caramely.

“Yes.”

Carlos closed his eyes and felt a single tear slip down his cheek. That was it, then. All finished.

“You gonna come pick him up?” Geoffrey continued.

Carlos stiffened, staring at the phone. What—Night Vale didn’t have a morgue? An unpleasant thought shifted across Carlos’ mind; maybe they thought he’d want to see the body. And he guessed, deep down, he did—wanted to see Cecil’s beautiful face one last time before he swallowed all of Cecil’s leftover pain medication and ended everything for himself as well.

“Okay,” Carlos said quietly.

“You all right, Carlos?” Geoffrey asked, and Carlos could hear the concern in his voice and detested it. “He’s been asking for you, you know.”

Carlos opened his mouth to make a harsh comment and froze. He tilted his head to the side. “What?” he finally managed.

“Cecil. He’s been asking for you since we finished with him. Still a little delirious, not quite sure what’s going on, but that’s to be expected. He’s got a bit of a headache too, and might be sore for a while, but he’ll be right as rain before long.” Now there was pride in Geoffrey’s voice, and Carlos was having trouble breathing.

“You mean—mean—Cecil’s… _alive?_ ” He could barely say it. He felt his breath catch in his throat as he pushed himself up into a sitting position, suddenly more alert than he’d felt in days.

“Yeah, of course! You coming to pick him up or what?”

Carlos felt like he’d been stabbed through the heart and then healed and made new, felt a strange golden energy washing over his aches, cleansing him, something like…something like hope.

“Carlos?”

Carlos put a hand to his mouth, suddenly breathing very heavily. He was beginning to feel light-headed and there were tears running down his face again, tears he hadn’t known he had left.

“Yeah?” he gasped.

“You coming to pick him up, or…?”

“Yes—yes!” Carlos’ voice was a squeak, then a shout. “Yes, yes, yes! Now?”

“Back of City Hall,” Geoffrey confirmed. “He’ll be waiting for you when you get here.”

Carlos leapt to his feet and dashed for the door, then skidded to a halt. He instead made a hasty beeline for the bathroom. His vision was blurring gray at the edges, but he forced it aside, pushing down everything but the sudden beautiful hope blossoming in his chest.

He looked absolutely awful; there were dark shadows under his eyes, which were more tired than he had ever seen them in a lifetime’s worth of late-night science experiments. His hair was a mess and he hadn’t showered or shaved in a week. He didn’t have time to shower but washed and shaved his face and tried to flatten his hair down. He didn’t waste any more time, dashing back into the living room and out into the garage.

He was halfway to City Hall when he passed Main Street, his eyes falling on a corner flower shop. With a sudden burst of inspiration, he pulled over with dangerous abandon and jumped out.

He quickly walked past the flowers in the front of the store, casting his eyes about hastily for something Cecil would like.

Cecil— _God_ , Cecil was alive! Carlos couldn’t quite believe it, didn’t think he really would until he laid eyes on him himself, but he was _alive!_ He felt like laughing, but restrained himself to beaming smiles at strangers as he picked out a bouquet of calla lilies that had been dyed a deep purple and dusted with a silver powder. _Mostly void, partially stars,_ Carlos thought, and suddenly wanted to hug every single person in the shop, because life was so incredibly beautiful and Cecil was _alive_.

Carlos handed the shopkeeper the entire wad of money in his billfold and turned to run back out to his car.

“Good to see you up and about, Carlos,” said the shopkeeper, and Carlos paused and looked back in surprise. The man’s face was distantly familiar, but couldn’t recall his name or anything else about him.

Instead he nodded in what he hoped was a thankful manner and turned to leave. “Take good care of Cecil!” the shopkeeper shouted after him, and Carlos could detect nothing but sincerity in his voice.

Carlos made short work of the drive to the back of City Hall and quickly parked on the curb. Geoffrey was waiting by the door for him, and nodded at his arrival.

Carlos hurried out of the car and started to come up to Geoffrey, but the secret policeman held up a hand. “Just wait there. They’re bringing him up.”

Carlos stood nervously, holding the bouquet in front of him, trying to hide the rumpled, unwashed state of his flannel shirt.

This was it. This was real. With no warning, a sudden horrible sinking feeling came over Carlos. What if whatever they had done hadn’t worked—what if it wouldn’t stick when Cecil actually came face to face with Carlos? What if it was all just another of Diego’s tricks, this one designed to give Carlos one last taste of hope before crushing him completely?

Carlos’ hands tightened nervously around the bouquet, crushing the stems in his sudden anxiety. He remembered how Cecil had woken up in the back of the van, how he’d looked up at him with those wide purple eyes. And in that one moment Carlos had been convinced everything was going to be all right. But then the fear had come over Cecil’s eyes, the terrible bone-deep terror that had possessed him when he lunged for the door of the van and tried to throw himself out…

Carlos was thinking that maybe he should just get back in his car and leave when the black iron door to City Hall opened.

A secret policeman had Cecil gently by the arm and was stepping forward, drawing him into the sunlight. There was a lumpy black bag over Cecil’s head, but Carlos knew him instinctively, could recognize him as easily as his own reflection in a mirror. He was taking short, timid steps, arms reached out a couple of inches, trying not to bump into any unseen barriers. And there—he even had Carlos’ watch glinting on his wrist after all this, his slender fingers playing nervously with the frayed edge of one of his bandages as the secret policeman reached over to untie the bag from around his head.

Carlos distantly registered Geoffrey glancing over at him expectantly, but Carlos had eyes only for Cecil. He could feel his heart running a mile a minute as the bag lifted past his lover’s eyes.

Cecil took a couple short, hesitant steps towards the sudden sunlight filling his vision, blinking rapidly.

Carlos waited, trying to push a smile onto his face, feeling his whole life pivoting on this moment.

Then Cecil’s eyes finally adjusted and fell on Carlos. He froze and blinked once, his eyes going wide as he stiffened.

Carlos felt himself stop breathing. He could see even from here—see the sudden tenseness in Cecil’s muscles, the alarm in his eyes, how his entire posture had changed the moment he saw Carlos. It hadn’t worked. It was just another of Diego’s sadistic tricks.

Cecil took a shaky step forward, then another, eyes never leaving Carlos even as the scientist cast his eyes down and prepared to turn away, feeling the bitter cold crushing around his chest again.

“ _Carlos?_ ” Cecil’s single word, strangled and disbelieving and hopeful all at once, stopped Carlos in his tracks. He looked up in surprise, and Cecil was closer now, stumbling closer, reaching for him like he was a ghost.

And suddenly Carlos realized that Cecil was walking _towards_ him.

Cecil had reached him now, eyes huge and endless, fingers reaching out to brush his wrist.

“Is it really—I—I thought,” Cecil hadn’t blinked, just kept staring up at him in total disbelief. His eyes began to water, and his next words were soaked with relief. “You came _back_.”

Carlos opened his mouth awkwardly but could only stare back at Cecil. He was searching his boyfriend’s eyes, looking for some trace of fear, some hint of the horror Diego had inflicted on him, looking for the terrible blankness that had dulled Cecil’s eyes when he’d downed those pills, thinking they were poison…but Cecil’s eyes were full. They were bright and shining, and filled to the brim with an emotion so immense and all-encompassing it seemed to fill his entire face, an emotion Carlos realized he had forgotten he’d ever seen in Cecil’s eyes.

He drew breath to say something, anything, to try and redeem himself somehow in the eyes of the beautiful man before him, to explain, though he had no idea where to start. “Cecil,” he began, his voice shaking. “I—”

He was abruptly cut off as Cecil’s hands suddenly moved to his collar, where they tightened around his shirt and pulled the scientist down into a kiss.

For several seconds Carlos was completely caught off guard, but then he found himself relaxing into the familiar touch. He could feel himself start to shake with sudden relief as all the frozen coils that had snaked their way around his heart in these last weeks loosened at last and fell away, melted by the sudden warmth of Cecil’s embrace. He felt Cecil’s hand on his cheek and wound his own around the slimmer man’s waist, still holding the bouquet.

The kiss seemed to go on forever and ever, an impossible infinity that reminded Carlos of all the ways he’d fallen in love in the first place. And then Cecil finally pulled back, gazing up at Carlos with the silliest, broadest smile on his face, as though to him Carlos were the sun, the moon, and all the stars.

And there, standing so close with his arms looped around Cecil, in the intimacy of even that simple embrace, there seemed something so incredibly beautiful, and so incredibly rare, and so incredibly undeserved, that he felt himself overflowing with tears again. He remembered the row of bottles on the bathroom counter and felt immensely ashamed, but also intensely relieved and grateful. He felt the empty hollow in his soul suddenly fill with all the emotions he’d thought he’d never feel again, the same emotions he now saw reflected in Cecil’s shining iridescent eyes. And it was the most wonderful thing in the world.

Cecil pulled back a little further as Carlos began to shake with this beautiful series of revelations, gazing up at him and reaching up one hand to rub away a tear from his cheek.

“Oh, my sweet, perfect scientist Carlos, why are you crying? What’s wrong?”

Carlos only smiled crookedly at him through fresh tears. “Absolutely nothing, Cecil. Absolutely nothing, ever again.” And this time it was Carlos who pulled Cecil in for a kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And...cue the fluff! This is where I was originally going to end the fic, but there was still a bunch of loose ends and emotional backlash to come, so...onward!


	8. The Cecil of Two Weeks Ago

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mixed angst and fluff dead-ahead. Watch the curves for glare ice. ;)

By the time they both managed to get into Carlos’ car, following two times Cecil refused to let Carlos go long enough for him to circle around to the driver’s seat, the secret police had all vanished, presumably to give them some privacy.

Carlos’ crying had set Cecil off too, and Cecil clutched his hand the entire drive home. This might not have been the wisest decision, as Carlos could barely see straight enough as it was though his own tears without having to drive one-handed as well.

They reached the house without incident, though Carlos decided it would be better to park on the street than try to sneak the car into the garage when he was seeing two of everything as it was. Cecil hadn’t said much beyond “Carlos, Carlos, oh my perfect, beautiful _Carlos_ ,” the whole way, clinging to Carlos’ hand like it was the only thing keeping him there.

Carlos, for his part, was still having trouble comprehending that Cecil was all right—honest to goodness, 100% okay, perfect and untouched. Carlos could still recall the absolute fear in Cecil’s eyes whenever he closed his own, but when he looked over at Cecil now, he could see nothing but the huge, silly smile on his face and the complete adoration in his eyes.

Carlos knocked into the curb with the tires and decided that must be close enough, turning the car off and popping the door open. Cecil’s grip on him immediately redoubled, but Carlos looked over and the radio host reluctantly loosened his grip long enough for Carlos to get out of the car.

As soon as he stood up, however, Carlos felt a sudden lightheadedness as gray splotches crowded around the edges of his vision. He reached for the edge of the car for support, but must have missed, because a moment later his vision cleared and Cecil was leaning over him.

He was sitting crookedly on the ground, slumped up against the car, Cecil’s hands clutching desperately at the collar of his shirt, trying to shake him into consciousness. The persistent _ding ding ding_ of the open driver’s door echoed in the background.

“—gods, no! Please, Carlos—I can’t lose you now, not when I’ve just got you back—!” Cecil’s voice was two octaves higher than usual, and shaking.

Carlos focused on Cecil’s voice, and saw the alarm in Cecil’s brilliant purple eyes flare into relief as his own flickered open.

“Car _los!_ Oh! Thank the gods! Carlos, Carlos, can you hear me?”

Carlos pushed himself up into a better sitting position, blinking in surprise. “I…what?” he managed.

“Carlos? Oh, Carlos, are you all right? Can you see me?” Cecil had a hand on Carlos’ cheek, his fingertips brushing back his hair worriedly.

Carlos raised a hand partway to his head, and saw it was shaking as badly as Cecil’s voice. That was odd. “I see you, Cecil…what just happened?”

Cecil bit his lip but seemed reassured by Carlos’ coherency, running a hand down Carlos’ chest and nervously smoothing a fold in his shirt down. “You just stood up and sort of…fell over.”

“Weird,” Carlos mumbled, motioning to Cecil that he needed room to stand up. Cecil hastened to help, scooping up the bouquet from where it was lying nearby and jumping to his feet before reaching over to pull Carlos to his own. Beyond the fresh pulsing pain in his knees and elbows, presumably where he had hit the car on his way to the ground, he seemed fine. Yet the moment he gained his feet, he felt the peculiar dizziness come over him again, and he swayed dangerously. Cecil was at his side in a second, pulling Carlos’ arm around his shoulders.

Cecil threw the car door shut and then carefully led Carlos across the lawn and up to the house, where he stopped a few feet short of the door.

Carlos’ vision was clearing, and he saw a pile of flat rectangular boxes clustered on the top step, right where the welcome mat would have been if they’d been legal in Night Vale. Carlos blinked a couple times and the rectangular shapes resolved themselves into metallic tins, shallow glass pans, large plastic bowls, and Tupperware of all shapes and sizes—food. And suddenly he remembered all the knocks and times the doorbell had rang, and how he’d thought they were all people wanting money. It seemed so incredibly silly now that he could have ever thought that, but everything he’d done in the last week seemed silly now. Night Vale had turned out to help him track down and rescue Cecil, after all—how could he ever have thought they would have stopped there? And not only did he now feel incredibly silly, but also incredibly selfish—here Cecil had just been re-educated, and Carlos was the one feeling faint. This last week he ought to have been preparing, ought to have made Cecil’s homecoming absolutely perfect, but instead he’d just…given up on him. Given up on himself. It all seemed mixed together. Carlos felt a distinct weight of guilt settle over him.

Meanwhile, Cecil was leaning over the pile of pans and trying the door.

“Carlos, honey, I don’t appear to have my keys,” Cecil said, sounding almost ashamed.

“I’ve got some…” Carlos said, avoiding Cecil’s eye as he fished them out of his jeans pocket and handed them over.

Cecil unlocked the door and led Carlos in, walking him over to the couch and sitting him down. Carlos watched Cecil carefully as his eyes roved around the room in surprise, passing over the rumpled blankets spread over the couch and the general state of clutter in the living room, pausing when he spotted his own shirt mixed in with the blankets. Carlos blushed, looking down guiltily and waiting for the questions to begin. To his surprise, Cecil only reached over to gently rub his shoulder and give him a quick kiss on the lips before going back to the door. He picked up a couple of the pans and moved over to the kitchen. Carlos watched him pause again as he surveyed the disaster zone that was the kitchen, where the remains of Carlos’ otherworld samples still lay broken on the floor. After a long moment, Cecil moved back around and left the pans on the counter. He moved back to the door and, two or three at a time, carried the rest of the food over to the counter. Carlos started to stand up, wanting to help, or at least not seem too infirm, but the gray haze reappeared as soon as he was upright and he quickly sat back down again.

Finally Cecil transported the final pan, locked the door, and came back over to the living room.

“There’re things you need to know, Cecil,” Carlos said quickly, staring at the carpet, wanting to get it done and over with. He wasn’t about to lie to Cecil, and it wouldn’t take long before the radio host figured it out for himself anyway.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Cecil fidget uncertainly. After a long moment, he came over and sat down on the couch next to Carlos, who noted that he seated himself just far enough away so that their shoulders didn’t brush.

Carlos stared through his hands at the floor and took a deep shuddering breath.

“Cecil, I’m going to tell you some things, and I hate that I have to do it now, and like this, but I don’t want to keep things from you. This is all going to sound crazy, but every word of it is true, I swear, and I wish it wasn’t.”

He glanced up at Cecil, who was looking at Carlos with a confused smile on his face. “I don’t—” he began.

“Just listen, please.” Carlos met Cecil’s eyes, imploring him to trust him. Cecil nodded, his face both serious and concerned. Carlos took a deep, shuddering breath and looked back at the floor. This was going to hurt both of them. “To start off with, I got back almost two weeks ago.”

He glanced up at Cecil, who was looking confused, but quickly plowed on.

“I found an old oak door in the desert otherworld and came through, but you weren’t here. I asked around, and found out that you’d already been missing for two weeks.”

Cecil opened his mouth, and held up a hand for Carlos to pause. “Wait—are you saying I haven’t been in Night Vale for _four weeks?_ ”

“Um, well, you’ve kind of been here for this last week, but that was the, um, re-education—I’m getting to that—”

“But then who’s been doing the show?”

Carlos felt his mouth twitch up into a semblance of a smile. Just like Cecil to put his job first.

“I mean, station management must be furious!” Cecil looked horrified. “They’ll have my head for this, I’m sure. Or maybe my kidneys—I hear they’ve been feeling creative lately—”

“Dana talked to station management; we’re all on the same page. Don’t worry about them.”

Cecil looked unconvinced. “But then what’s the station been broadcasting all this time? Who’s been giving warnings about Glow Cloud manifestations, and book attacks, and—”

Carlos reached over and took Cecil’s hand. “Don’t worry about it, Cecil. They’ve been playing re-runs of your old shows, and some of the interns have been doing the important news. It’s all taken care of.”

Cecil still looked unconvinced, but nodded acceptance of Carlos’ words.

Carlos turned his mind back to his narrative and his eyes to the floor, feeling the taste in his mouth sour. “Okay, so, Cecil. Four weeks ago you were kidnapped by my double, a scientist named Diego.”  

Carlos pulled Cecil’s hand over towards him and enveloped it in his own. He braced himself. “He…oh, Cecil, I don’t know how…He did terrible things to you. Dana and the Erikas and the secret police helped me find you, and we went to Desert Bluffs to rescue you, but it was too late. You’d been with him for weeks, and there wasn’t much…” Carlos could feel the tears coming again, hot and messy this time. Cecil’s hand had gone very still between his own.

“He’d…he’d done something to you. Brainwashed, or something. You…you were…” Carlos swallowed hard, knowing the next words would hurt Cecil as much as they did him. “You were terrified of me, Cecil. Petrified.”

Cecil gave a short laugh, Carlos glanced up at him, and Cecil immediately looked guilty. “I mean—Carlos, I could never be afraid of you!” He leaned over and squeezed Carlos around the shoulders, but then glanced nervously at Carlos again, as though he wasn’t sure if his touch was allowed.

“You were,” Carlos said flatly, returning his gaze to the carpet. “You tried— _God_ , Cecil—you tried to jump out of the getaway van. While it was moving. You could barely walk, but you were just so desperate to get away... That’s why you’ve got so many bandages—he almost—oh, Cecil, he almost killed you.” Carlos couldn’t take it anymore and turned to Cecil, burying his face in Cecil’s shoulder. Immediately Cecil’s arms wrapped around him, and that just made Carlos cry harder.

“Shhh, it’s okay,” Cecil said soothingly, though his voice sounded a little shaky.

“You stopped—stopped breathing at one point,” Carlos sobbed into his shoulder, the terrible moment flashing before his eyes. “I thought—oh, Cecil, I thought I’d lost you so many times.”

Cecil’s arms locked around Carlos and pulled him even closer, one hand stroking back his hair, the other rubbing up and down his back. It all felt so incredibly safe; it was so good to be surrounded by Cecil, to let himself finally cry it out, and to tell Cecil all the things he needed to and see something other than absolute fear looking back at him.

But this wasn’t Cecil’s problem anymore, had never really been; it was his, and his alone. Cecil didn’t remember, and there was no sense in traumatizing him over something he couldn’t remember and that hadn’t even been his fault in the first place. So Carlos sniffed loudly and pulled back, pawing at his eyes. He didn’t deserve Cecil’s comfort, didn’t deserve Cecil at all after everything he’d done.

“I’m sorry, Carlos. I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

Carlos shook his head quickly. “It’s not your fault. Not…not anybody’s fault.” _My fault_ , Carlos amended silently. _If I’d come back from that damned desert earlier, none of this might have happened_.

Cecil reached over and squeezed his hand. “So how’d I end up at City Hall?”

“Geoffrey—Geoffrey thought maybe re-education could help erase the memories. If it worked—you should be completely missing the last four weeks.”

“Well, I’d say it worked,” Cecil said, glancing around the room again. “I don’t remember leaving this place such a mess.”

He must have meant it as a joke, but it just dissolved Carlos into fresh tears.

“Oh, no, don’t cry, Carlos, sweetie.” Cecil rubbed his shoulder and scooted closer, pulling Carlos in towards him. “It’ll be all right.” There was a pause, then: “So what happened to the couch? Angry visitor? Or was the Faceless Old Woman feeling artistic?”

Carlos swallowed thickly as he realized that Cecil must have seen the gash in the upholstery. He twisted his head into a ‘no.’

“Well, what, then?”

Carlos bit back a reply, and shook his head again. He felt Cecil’s hand stop rubbing momentarily, and wished it would resume. “It was me, wasn’t it?” Cecil asked at length.

Carlos didn’t want to agree, but found he couldn’t stop himself. “Yes. You tried—you tried—you were just so scared, so terrified of me, was all—I was sleeping down here to give you some space…you got a knife…you were just so _scared_ …” Carlos couldn’t finish, descending into tears once again.

“Oh, Carlos.” Cecil pulled Carlos into a tight hug. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry you went through that. I’m sorry for what I did.”

Carlos shook his head violently. “It’s not your fault, not at all. Diego…it was in no way your fault. It was…it wasn’t you.”

“No, no,” Cecil agreed quickly, though he didn’t sound reassured.

“But you’re okay now…you should be okay now…” Carlos looked up at Cecil, begging for confirmation.

Cecil nodded hastily. “I don’t remember any of this,” he admitted. “And I’m sorry you do. This Diego—what did you say happened to him?” Cecil’s voice had taken on an icy tone.

Carlos let out a strangled half-laugh. “Dana shot him, right through the head. And if she hadn’t, I would have.”

Cecil ran his hand through Carlos’ hair again, his fingers tangling in the loose locks as he exhaled deeply. “Well, what’s done is done, I suppose.”

Carlos nodded shakily against him.

“So what happened in the kitchen? I—what? Did a number on the couch and then…was that your science stuff? I saw your satchel.”

Carlos swallowed.

“I take it psycho-me didn’t like your science very much? What a shame; I was really missing out…sorry about your stuff.” Cecil sounded both guilty and genuinely apologetic as he continued to stroke back Carlos’ hair. He seemed to have a particular fondness for the gray streaks at his temples.

“It wasn’t you,” Carlos said, his voice choking on the words.

“Hmm?”

“It wasn’t you,” Carlos repeated, slightly louder. “That did that. In the kitchen. It was me. It was just,” Carlos paused, filled with a sudden desire to explain himself, “Science. That was why I stayed in that stupid desert for so long, and that was why I wasn’t around when Diego grabbed you—I—I traded your life for a bunch of scientific samples.” Carlos was crying again, and the dry sandy feeling had returned to the pit of his stomach. “And I didn’t—didn’t want them. Didn’t want anything to do with science—still don’t—never again. It was my fault Diego had you so long, Cecil; everything that happened to you was _my_ fault, and it was because of science, so I’m done with it, Cec, I’m done, I swear, I’ll never be a scientist again; all I want is you."

“Oh, Carlos,” Cecil said, and he sounded worried. “But you love science!”

Carlos shook his head furiously against Cecil’s chest.

“But you _do_ , Carlos! You’re a scientist, and you love science, and _I_ love you, and I love that you love science.”

Carlos was shaking, but wasn’t sure why.

“And your lab coat! I was wondering where it was. You’re perfect, Carlos, but you’re especially perfect in your lab coat, doing what you love.”

Carlos sniffed against Cecil’s shirt. “Science doesn’t even work here, doesn’t even do its job. I went to the lab and my key didn’t even work. It just doesn't matter.”

“Oh, Carlos, honey, that’s just because last week—well, five weeks ago now, I guess—the Sheriff’s Secret Police changed all the business’ locks overnight. For increased security.”

Carlos laughed a little, brokenly.

“You’re a scientist, honey, and best of all you’re _my_ scientist. But if you really want to quit science, that’s okay, but please don’t do it on my account.”

Carlos felt a fresh wave of emotion overwhelm him as he hugged Cecil tighter to him. He hadn’t expected absolution from the radio host, and he had never expected understanding, and somehow he had been granted both. “Okay,” he managed at last, though his voice was choking up. “I’ll be a—a scientist again.” And he did love science, he really did, hadn’t realized quite how much until he took away Cecil and science both and saw how little of himself was left. “Thank you.”

“Oh, Carlos, sweetie, there’s nothing to thank.”

For a long moment Carlos just leaned into Cecil, breathing in his intoxicating scent and wondering how he had managed to lose the two halves of his life so completely and then gain them back so beautifully.

As Cecil’s chest deflated under Carlos’ head, he felt the radio host’s breath hitch ever so slightly. Suddenly reminded of Cecil’s injuries, Carlos pulled back quickly and placed a gentle hand on Cecil’s chest, right over where he knew the thickest bandage lay. “Now, there’s one last thing, one last part to the story," Carlos said, swallowing down his own emotions. "I wouldn’t have told you all this, because it’s not your fault and there’s nothing you can do about it, but you deserved to know and people will be talking about it…and then there’s this.” He gently stroked Cecil’s chest. Cecil was looking a little uncertain.

“It was Diego, just remember that, please?” Carlos took a deep breath, trying to keep his voice level, the brief happiness of a moment ago fading quickly under this new worry. “Let’s go to the bathroom. I see you’ve bled through some of the bandages too, so I’ll need to re-stitch the ones you pulled anyway.”

At Carlos’ unnaturally level tone, Cecil looked even warier than before, but let Carlos help him up all the same. Carlos took a couple deep breaths as he stood, trying to clear the sudden grayness from the edges of his vision. Cecil quickly put an arm around him and they slowly made their way to the bathroom, where Carlos indicated Cecil should take a seat on the edge of the tub. Cecil complied as Carlos carefully pulled a roll of fresh bandages, a needle, and some of the medical thread from a cabinet and turned back to Cecil to find that the radio host had stopped halfway through the process of unbuttoning his shirt in favor of staring at the sink. Carlos followed his gaze and saw the careful row of pill bottles he had lined up earlier. Carlos looked at them guiltily and then quickly pushed them to the back of the counter, trying not to think about it.

Carlos carefully took a seat on the bathroom stool as Cecil resumed the unbuttoning of his shirt. Once he was done, Carlos carefully peeled back the bandages one by one, starting with the one on his boyfriend's left forearm, wincing in sync with Cecil as the gauze caught on the stitches. Cecil’s tattoos were back to their usual positions along his arms, and they swarmed happily around Carlos’ fingers as he carefully cleaned the wound, swirling into little purple hearts and roses that made both men blush.

Fewer of the stitches had pulled out than he’d initially thought, but Carlos took care to make sure nothing looked infected and add some disinfectant cream to each wound before he re-wrapped them, just in case. Cecil winced as the cream settled into the cuts, but said nothing.

Finally there was nothing left except the large bandage around Cecil’s chest. Carlos had been putting it off until last, thinking that that way if Cecil got upset or angry, he’d at least have taken care of the other injuries. Carlos carefully kept his face neutral as he peeled off the bandage, wincing at every snag. Finally it was off, and Carlos sat back, unable to look Cecil in the eye.

He saw Cecil’s hands inch around the carefully stitched gashes, trying to make sense of them. They were the deepest of the lot, and from the moment Carlos had seen them he’d known they would leave a scar forever.

He watched Cecil’s hands freeze as the radio host put together what he was seeing. Then he heard Cecil sigh, sharp and high.

Carlos bit his lip and stared at the tiled floor; he couldn’t bear to see the anger certainly settling onto Cecil’s face. “I’m sorry; it’s Diego, he’s twisted, thought it’d be funny or something—”

He broke off as Cecil reached over, putting a finger under his jaw to bring his eye line up. Cecil’s face was washed in…relief?

“Is this all? This was what you were afraid of me seeing?”

Carlos nodded slowly, feeling his eyebrows constrict in confusion. Cecil was taking this far too well. “It’ll scar for sure,” Carlos said, trying to make sure he understood. “It’ll never fade completely—”

Cecil leaned forward and broke him off this time with a kiss.

When he pulled back, he was smiling. “Oh, silly Carlos,” he said, his voice impossibly perfect as he stroked back a lock of Carlos’ hair. “Did you honestly think I’d mind having your name written over my heart?”


	9. All He'd Ever Really Wanted

Carlos was seeing stars again as Cecil led him back into the living room and guided him over to the couch.

“Now,” Cecil said, his voice suddenly businesslike as he sat him down, “you still feeling dizzy?”

Carlos nodded, feeling pathetic.

Cecil tilted his head, as though listening to something only he could hear. “Could be…hmm…acute—no…it’s not throat spiders again, is it?” He sounded worried.

Carlos shook his head. He didn’t remember getting dizzy the last time, just generally feeling crappy.

“Well, have you been getting enough sleep?”

Carlos shrugged. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually slept all night.

“Are you dehydrated? This is a desert, you know.”

Carlos frowned. “I’m not sure—” he began. These last few days he’d done little more than lie around, barely sleeping, falling in and out of consciousness with shivers that racked his entire body, just counting the hours until he could muster enough energy to make it to the bathroom to take the pills…

Cecil seemed to be thinking along similar lines. His voice took on a gentle tone. “Carlos, honey, when was the last time you ate anything?”

Carlos didn’t respond, racking his brains for the answer. He distantly recalled the sandwich Dana had forced him to eat that first night he came back, but before that…he hadn’t really needed to eat or drink in the desert otherworld, and he guessed he must have fallen out of the habit.

He must have looked guilty, because Cecil stood up and moved over to the kitchen. “Well, good news is that we’ve got plenty of food now! I’m famished, myself. They never feed you much during re-education, but then again, the painkillers haven’t worn off yet, so hey!...” He trailed off, picking his way through the remains of Carlos’ samples as he opened the fridge and then closed it again immediately with a grimace. “Nothing in there that’s not four weeks rotten, I’m sure.”

Carlos moved to get up, but Cecil immediately waved him back down. “No, no, perfect Carlos, you stay there, I’ll get you a plate of something…what’s this…enchiladas okay?” Cecil had pried open the lid on the topmost pan piled on the counter.

Carlos made a sound of agreement and slumped back down on the couch. Now that he was thinking about it, he realized he was _starving_. Suddenly he wondered if the aching in his abdomen these past few days hadn’t been entirely grief.

Cecil finished up and came back over to Carlos, handing him a plate with an enchilada and a dollop of what looked like potato salad on it, along with a fork and a tall glass of water. “Don’t eat it too fast,” Cecil warned as he went back to fetch his own plate.

Cecil settled down beside him on the couch a moment later, seeming far more at ease than he had before.

Carlos was perfectly ravenous, but couldn’t find it in him to do much more than push little gooey squares of enchilada around on his plate. He took a couple bites, and though it tasted delicious, it seemed to turn bitter on the way down.

Cecil, who had quickly demolished half of his own plate, noticed and looked over at him, frowning. He set his fork down. “What is it, Carlos? You need to eat something.”

Carlos nodded despondently, keeping his eyes on his plate, chasing a strand of half-melted cheese around halfheartedly. He finally sighed and set the fork down, sitting back further on the couch.

“Carlos? Sweet, perfect Carlos, what’s wrong?” Cecil immediately abandoned his plate in favor of leaning back as well, snuggling up closer to Carlos and carefully studying his face with his brilliant purple eyes.

“It’s just…” Carlos sighed and trailed off. “You honestly don’t remember _anything?_ ”

Cecil shook his head. “I remember going to work, and I remember signing off. Nothing after that. The next thing I remember is walking out of City Hall and…and seeing you.” Cecil couldn’t seem to keep the smile out of his voice, even as he poked Carlos’ shoulder affectionately.

Carlos nodded. “Good, that’s…that’s good.”

“Then what’s the matter?”

Carlos frowned. What _was_ the matter? He was okay, and Cecil was okay, and Diego was gone—that was it, then, right?

“I guess,” Carlos said after a moment, “I guess I keep thinking this is just another trick of Diego’s. You should have seen his lab, Cecil—he had charged plates and acid traps and carbon monoxide chambers—the whole thing was booby-trapped more than an Egyptian pyramid.”

Cecil looked confused. “A—a what?”

“Egyp—nevermind. Anyway, it took forever to find you, and then there were more and more traps, and then you woke up, and that was just a whole ‘nother trap, just another way to get at me…and now it just…well, it just seems too good to be true, and if I let my guard down…well, then, the trap will close around us.” He winced a little, waiting for the inevitable scoff, but it didn’t come. Instead, Cecil pulled back a little so he could look Carlos in the eyes more clearly.

“Carlos,” he said. “We live in a dangerous world. At any moment, we could be victims of angry spirit attacks, of municipally approved earthquakes, of assassinations carried out by a vague yet menacing government agency, but none of that makes me love you any less. I know you feel like you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it may never do so. We live in the present, Carlos, not the past or the future. And right here, right now, I love you, and I don’t feel any sudden horrific memories about to surface, so I’m not going to worry about it. And I love you, Carlos; I love you from the tips of your perfect hair to the soles of your too-big feet; I’ve loved you since I first saw you, and I intend to love you for a good while longer, but it’s going to be awfully difficult to do that if you refuse to eat anything.” He looked pointedly at the plate.

Carlos couldn’t suppress a shaky laugh even as Cecil grabbed Carlos’ plate and brought it closer, using the scientist’s fork to stab a bite-sized square of enchilada. Cecil held it up threateningly in front of him. “Now, are we going to do this the easy way, or the hard way?”

Carlos felt a smile twitching his lips. There, in front of him, with Cecil’s face so earnest and also so playful, waggling the fork in a manner not at all suited to his age—it just seemed that, for the first time in forever, everything might just be all right.

“Hard way,” he said with a crooked smile.

Cecil looked decidedly mischievous as he leaned closer, bringing the fork with him. “Good decision. How about…” Cecil’s voice dropped an octave. “For every bite…you get a…” he paused to think, biting his lip and looking upwards as if searching for inspiration. Then he quirked an eyebrow theatrically and wriggled even closer. “A kiss,” he finished, leaning over to peck Carlos on the cheek.

“But I haven’t eaten anything yet,” Carlos said innocently.

“That one was just a freebie, ‘cause you’re such a cutie,” Cecil said sweetly, proffering the fork. Carlos obediently reached out to take the utensil, but Cecil pulled it away. “Ah, ah, ah,” he said. “You had your chance. Now the fork is mine.”

Feeling rather silly, Carlos opened his mouth as Cecil moved his hand closer, and Carlos ate the square of enchilada straight off the fork. “This is very unscientific,” Carlos mumbled embarrassedly as he chewed, but Cecil leaned over and kissed him on the cheek again, which only served to brighten his blush.

Eventually Carlos did manage to regain control of his own fork, though Cecil kept showering him with kisses. He realized that, for everything he’d been through, and Cecil too, the only thing _this_ Cecil here knew was that Carlos had suddenly come home from the desert otherworld—this was the Cecil he’d been looking for when he came through the old oak door two weeks ago.

Eventually Carlos finished his plate, and now it was his turn to withhold kisses as Cecil chopped the remainder of the enchilada on his own plate into increasingly tiny squares in hopes of extending the exercise.

Then one of Cecil’s tattoos became adventurous and slipped onto Cecil’s cheek during a kiss, where it wriggled its way across to Carlos’ face to explore, not realizing when Carlos pulled back. The tattoo, currently in the shape of an adorable little koi fish, quickly panicked when it realized Cecil was no longer touching Carlos, and swam around in frantic little circles on Carlos’ cheek. Carlos, for his part, couldn’t figure out why Cecil had suddenly burst out laughing until he pulled out his phone and took a video to show Carlos. Carlos descended into hysterics as well, putting a hand to his cheek to tempt the tiny inked fish onto his hand. From there the tattoo swirled from the back of his hand onto his palm, desperately looking for its friends, and eventually unraveling into a thin purple line and forming the word “CECIL?” in an elaborate cursive font. Carlos laughed and tried asking it questions, but its vocabulary seemed limited, and just kept running in circles around Carlos’ ring finger, spelling out the radio host’s name in all caps and looking generally very confused. Finally Cecil took pity and covered Carlos’ hand with his own. The little tattoo swirled gratefully back onto Cecil’s skin, where it made an immediate beeline for its fellows near Cecil’s clavicles, where the other tattoos appeared to be working on an elaborate line drawing of Carlos’ face wreathed in roses.

By the time Cecil finished his plate, they were both in tears from laughing so much, and Cecil was having trouble finding enough breath to swallow his food. It was so… _freeing_ , just being able to laugh again, and whenever Diego crossed his mind, Carlos just looked over at Cecil, and thought how he didn’t look an inch different, not really, from the last time he’d seen him before being trapped in the desert otherworld.

It really was like the last four weeks had never happened. They were both still a bit shaky physically, sure, and every now and then Cecil grimaced as all the laughing pulled at his stitches, but he looked like he wouldn’t want it any other way, and always leaned over to give Carlos an extra kiss whenever it happened. Maybe Diego _had_ tried to pull them apart…but maybe it hadn’t worked.

When both men had calmed down enough to finish their glasses of water, they decided to call it a night. Cecil, though he was doing a good job of hiding it, must have been exhausted; he usually slept the whole day after re-education, though he claimed he didn’t have the usual headaches this time. Carlos, meanwhile, with the warm feeling of having his stomach full for the first time in a long time, was feeling sleepy as well, the days and nights of fitful, broken sleep finally catching up to him.

Cecil stood up first, a little shaky as he reached his hand back to help Carlos up. They left their dirty plates on the kitchen counter, deciding unanimously that that was a job better left until morning, and started upstairs, giggling and clinging to each other like a couple of drunks.

Carlos fell back onto the bed with careless ease, dragging Cecil with him. Cecil squeaked in protest, but Carlos rolled him over to his side of the bed and set about pulling the covers over both of them.

“Radio host needs his beauty sleep,” Carlos said, snuggling closer and sweeping Cecil’s hair out of his face.

“Scientist needs his, too,” Cecil said, though he already sounded sleepy. He wriggled his shoulders to burrow deeper into the blankets, and Carlos curled his arm around Cecil’s torso, tucking his head in beside Cecil’s and letting himself marvel at the simple act of touching the other man, a thought impossible a few short hours ago.

“I love you, Cecil,” he whispered into the back of Cecil’s neck.

He saw Cecil’s cheek twitch and thought he must be smiling. “I love you too, perfect Carlos.”

Carlos exhaled deeply and closed his eyes, letting the warm air and his sudden intense tiredness drag him down into sleep, embracing the one person he loved most in the world.

 

~~~~****~~~~

 

_Carlos was laughing with Cecil. Two of Cecil’s tattoos had somehow worked their way onto his eyelids, so when he closed his eyes, it still looked like they were open. Actually, that was really unnerving. Carlos stopped laughing._

_And then Cecil’s real eyes opened, and he stopped laughing too. He was looking past Carlos, towards the window._

_Cecil followed his gaze. And there, standing just inches behind the glass, a Strex smile plastered on his face, was Diego. At least, it looked like Diego, which was to say, it looked like Carlos, except for the fact that the entire right-hand side of his face was gone. It was a reddened crater, still smoking, and there was a single red tear crawling down the left side of his face from where the bullet had entered. Despite this, Diego was still smiling, his eyes cold and penetrating—and fixed on Cecil._

_Carlos looked back over at his boyfriend, and suddenly Cecil’s eyes with the tattooed eyes on the eyelids opened for a third time, somehow, and there was the blank fear of a week ago—absolute, mindless terror filling his entire face._

_Carlos reached for Cecil, trying to grab him by the shoulder, but Cecil had pulled away. He was cowering against the corner of the couch now, knees pulled up to his chest, arms covering his eyes so Carlos couldn’t see his face at all. But he needed to see Cecil’s face, needed to be sure—needed to know Cecil was okay, more than he’d ever needed to know anything in his entire life, but the radio host wouldn’t budge when Carlos reached for his arms—_

_Diego was standing in front of him now, hands outstretched, reaching for his throat, giving him the same choking hug Cecil had told him Kevin had once given him—_

_He could feel his breath shorten, feel the sudden weight of deathly fear descend—_

Carlos jolted into sudden wakefulness, scrabbling around with the bedspread. He glanced around wildly, eyes adjusting hastily in the darkness. Cecil wasn’t beside him, Cecil’s side of the bed was cold and empty, where was Cecil, where was Cecil, Cecil was _gone_ , oh God, oh God, oh God no—

“Cecil?” His voice sounded strangled and weak, and at the same time too loud and terrified, but he couldn’t control it. “Cecil, _Cecil!_ God, _no—_ ”

There was a quick thumping from outside the bedroom door and Carlos cowered back against the mattress as a sudden light spilled into the room from the hallway. It was Diego, it was Diego, it had to be, he’d taken Cecil, had come back to finish the job—

“Carlos?” Carlos’ breathing stopped completely as Cecil’s voice filled the room, and suddenly his brain was putting together the slim silhouette in the bedroom door even as it moved towards him. “Carlos, Carlos, don’t worry, I’m here, I’m right here—”

In an instant, Cecil had crossed the distance and crawled back onto the bed, hugging Carlos to him.

“Cecil?” For a few seconds Carlos could only gasp against him in shock, drinking in his warmth and scent, and then pulled back, searching his face.

“It’s me, it’s me, I’m fine, it’s okay,” Cecil said soothingly, and Carlos couldn’t see anything but concern in his eyes.

Carlos sobbed again, this time in relief, and buried his head in Cecil’s chest.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Cecil said soothingly, stroking Carlos’ hair back. “I just woke up with a headache and went to get some painkillers, that’s all. That’s all, shh, Carlos, it’ll be okay.”

Carlos hiccupped against him and tried to stop crying, but Cecil’s soothing words just elicited more tears. It was quite some time before he finally hiccupped himself into submission.

“What time is it?” he managed at last.

“About two in the morning, I think,” Cecil said, still stroking his hair back. “If the clocks are working these days. You okay now?”

Carlos nodded.

“Nightmare?”

Carlos nodded again. “Diego,” he croaked.

Cecil nodded knowingly and pulled Carlos tighter against him. “It’ll be okay; you’ll see. I think…” Cecil paused. “From what you’ve said, I don’t think Diego was just going after me. I mean, the traps in his lab sound difficult for anyone to get past except a scientist, and then there’s the fact that, considering Diego apparently had me for _weeks_ , I’m really not in that bad of shape…I just don’t think he ever really meant to kill me. I think he got to me physically, sure, but he got to you just as much emotionally. He wanted both of us to suffer—equally—so he designed his torture for two.”

Carlos sniffed and nodded against Cecil’s chest.

“But you fixed me, Carlos. I’m just fine—more than fine, for being with you again. But I think he’s still torturing you.”

Carlos shuddered a little.

“So I don’t want you to take this lightly, whatever he’s done to you. Just because it doesn’t leave marks doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. But I’m here now, and I’m going to help you through this. We’ll get through this together, I promise.”

Carlos nodded, and for a long moment Cecil just kept running his fingers through Carlos’ hair, and Carlos wished he’d never stop.

“And Carlos, love,” Cecil began after a moment. “I hate to bring this up right now, but…all those painkillers in the bathroom…why were they all lined up like that?”

Carlos felt himself stop shaking abruptly, and Cecil must have noticed, because he stopped smoothing Carlos’ hair back.

Carlos forced himself to shrug, praying Cecil couldn’t see his guilt-stricken face.

Cecil was silent for a long moment, though he didn’t resume stroking Carlos’ hair.

“It just seems…” Cecil began, trailing off. He seemed uncertain. “What with the giant pile of food literally sitting on our doorstep, and you still getting faint from hunger—don’t deny it; you’re far skinnier than you ought to be, and I can feel each of your ribs when I hug you—and the fact that I must have been in for re-education for a few days at least, because they don’t give you that level of painkiller when you leave unless they’ve done something really gnarly to you—and then you haven’t been sleeping—you look exhausted too, honey, those dark circles under your pretty eyes—and the stuff with science—I was just wondering—correct me if I’m wrong—but I was wondering if…maybe you’d lined up those bottles of pills because you…well…because you intended on taking them.” Cecil’s voice got very quiet and, if Carlos heard right, maybe a little afraid.

Carlos didn’t reply, but sniffled a little.

“Carlos, honey,” Cecil said, his voice still quiet. “Did you intend on taking them?”

Carlos wanted to say no. He really, really wanted to.  But he just couldn’t lie to Cecil, not when it was so obvious anyway, and there was nothing in the world he wanted to keep from Cecil ever again.

So he nodded slowly, wretchedly.

Carlos couldn’t bear to look at Cecil, to see the disappointment in his eyes, so instead he buried his head back in Cecil’s chest, trying to calm himself down by breathing in Cecil’s reassuring scent. “It was just…it was so _bad_ , Cecil,” he tried to explain. “The re-education was bound to kill you for sure, in the state you were in, and that would’ve been my fault for agreeing to it, and I would’ve had to live with that. And then everything Diego had _done_ to you, Cecil; I couldn’t forget, couldn’t think of anything else, and it just hurt so damn _much_ …and even if I had left—left Night Vale, that is—after you were gone, and went back into science—oh, but I couldn’t, Cecil, couldn’t go back to all that…that awful jealousy, and prejudice, and greed that’s out there. Night Vale’s just so… _amazing,_ and _you’re_ just so amazing, and without you I’d have died one way or another within the week anyway, and it seemed better to be able to choose, you know? But Cecil—oh, _Cecil,_ I was so convinced you were dead, and I’m sorry, I’m sorry I ever thought of it, I’m sorry it ever crossed my mind, I don’t know what I was thinking…” Carlos finally broke off with a sob, trying to bury himself even further into Cecil’s shoulder, shaking again. He just wanted everything to be okay. He just wanted to be happy again.

“Sorry you thought of doing it, or sorry that I lived?”

Carlos pulled his head back a little. “What?” he croaked. “I’m not…”

“No, are you sorry you thought about it, or are you sorry you thought about it because I lived?”

Carlos tried to parse that out, but his brain was sluggish. “The second one?” he tried.

“So you wouldn’t have been sorry if I’d died and you’d done it?”

 _Well,_ thought Carlos. _I’d have been dead too, so I don’t think I’d have been thinking much of anything, really._

“You’re saying that, if I suddenly dropped dead tomorrow,” Cecil clarified, “you would try it again? Take the pills?”

Carlos swallowed. He felt there was a trap here, but he was too tired to figure out where it lay, and he was so tired of looking for traps as it was. He just wanted Cecil to go back to stroking his hair and telling him everything was going to be all right.

But he thought through the question, wanting to give Cecil an honest answer. And he pictured Diego coming back, and he pictured himself finding Cecil somehow, dead, and he could already feel the dark hollow in his chest at the thought. He swallowed and nodded. “Yes, I’d do it, if you were dead.”

He heard Cecil sigh, felt his chest rise and sink in time to the motion. “Oh, _Carlos,_ ” Cecil murmured, running a hand through the scientist’s hair. Carlos relaxed into the touch, but it stopped after just the one pass.

“Oh, Carlos, would you really?” Cecil sounded distressed.

Carlos shrugged and nodded. “Without you…” He felt the dark shadow cross his heart again. “Oh, Cecil, without you I’d die.”

Cecil’s hand played with the hair at the nape of his neck. “No you wouldn’t, Carlos,” he said softly.

Carlos felt mildly affronted. “Sure, I—” he began, but Cecil cut him off.

“Carlos, if you died tonight, would you want me to kill myself in the morning?”

Carlos opened his mouth, still feeling strongly about the previous comment, but then paused. And another shadow came over his heart, but this one was colder, and darker, and so much sadder.

“No,” he said quietly. “I would never want anything to happen to you.”

“And you think I feel differently about you?” Cecil asked, and Carlos finally understood what he was driving at. And suddenly Carlos felt he _understood_ the dark guilt that had been haunting him all day—it wasn’t the guilt of considering suicide, it was the guilt of knowing how Cecil would have felt had he come home to find the deed already done.

“No,” Carlos sobbed, and buried his head back in Cecil’s chest. “God, Cecil, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” He broke off into wordless sobs, and this time when Cecil pulled him close to kiss him softly on the forehead, he resumed stroking Carlos’ hair.

“Carlos, you’re my favorite person in the entire world,” Cecil said quietly, tucking his chin down so it rested just above Carlos’ head. “And even if I were dead, you’d still be my favorite. And for all my favorites—” here he paused in his stroking to ruffle Carlos’ hair affectionately— “I wish only the best things life can give. Carlos, you are beautiful and I love you, but you don’t need me to go on.”

Carlos shook his head in a furious negative.

“Shh, Carlos. You really don’t need me. That being said, though, I’m certainly going to do my very best to go on with you for as long as I can. And you’ve got to do the same, okay? We’ll both go on together for as long as we can. Deal?”

Carlos nodded. “Deal,” he murmured.

Cecil resumed stroking Carlos’ hair again, and Carlos let out a deep, contented sigh. Cecil was right; of course he was. He still felt bad about the pills, but felt a little better knowing that Cecil wouldn’t hold it against him. No, perfect Cecil was just snuggling in under him more comfortably, pulling the blankets higher around their shoulders and showing no intention of ever letting Carlos leave his grip.

“This is a nice bedspread,” Cecil murmured sleepily, gently patting the sea foam green fabric. “Do you remember picking it out? The crazy lady at the store kept saying it would break your heart and heal it, and you said that was absolute crap and not scientific at all, but you bought it anyway because I liked it so much.”

Carlos ran a hand over the bedspread, bemused. “I’d forgotten that,” he said softly. “I remember the crazy lady, though, now that you…mention…it.” Just days ago, Carlos remembered suddenly, Cecil hadn’t even _recognized_ the bedspread, and now he remembered more about it than Carlos did! _Break your heart and heal it_. Carlos stared at the bedspread for a long couple of seconds and then tilted his head back and up, searching for Cecil’s lips with his own.

The radio host tasted sweet and perfect, if a bit onion-y from the enchiladas still, and Carlos thought distantly that they should definitely go back to that store and tip that woman generously.

It was just such a miracle that, after everything that had happened and all those sleepless nights he’d spent thinking he’d never see Cecil again, he was again lying beside the radio host, listening to him drift off to sleep muttering about crazy women in bedspread stores. It was just so improbable that everything should have turned out so perfectly. Maybe things weren’t _quite_ perfect, not yet anyway, but time would heal that.

What was important was that he was here, and Cecil was here, and they were safe and together, and when Carlos thought about it, he realized that that was all he had ever really wanted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, that bit with the enchiladas is hands-down the fluffiest thing I've ever written, I cannot believe these words came from my fingertips.
> 
> And hooray! You made it to the end! I hope I successfully tempered the angst with fluff and happy endings. :) 
> 
> I'd also like to thank all of you guys for your kind comments; they always make me smile, and it's so nice having encouragement and feedback of all kinds.


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